Ball Played: Yada, yada, yada; Indians destroy Tigers
June 25, 2015SI names Indians’ Jason Kipnis AL MVP leader
June 25, 2015This just in: Josh McCown is not a mannequin. He is an actual human, American football player.
It’s true! If you get an opportunity to attend a Cleveland Browns practice, you can see him moving about or throwing the football. He’s a big dude, 6-foot-4, 218 pounds. There are only a handful of Browns players 6-4 or taller, but most of those guys are a lot wider, so it’s pretty easy to spot McCown on the field. He wears a Browns jersey, and not because he’s just modeling the new uniforms. He wears number 13, and not just in recognition of Frank Ryan, who last quarterbacked the Browns to a championship wearing that number. No, Josh McCown wears a Browns uniform, number 13, because, truth be told, it’s his uniform. He is actually, right now, the number one quarterback for the Cleveland Browns.
I know, this is difficult to believe, because we’ve been told many times by what we assumed were reliable sources in the media that, in spite of what the Browns have been saying on the record, they don’t really have a quarterback. Not yet, anyway.
As Brian Hoyer’s level of performance seemed to flow and ebb with the rest of the team in 2014, particularly with the health and effectiveness of the offensive line, the oft-heard laments were: 1) that Brian Hoyer was not a Franchise Quarterback, 2) that no team, including the Browns, would ever win anything without a Franchise Quarterback, 3) that Johnny Manziel, being a first-round pick and former Heisman Trophy winner, deserved a chance to start, 4) that even if Manziel wasn’t completely prepared the Browns had to play him to “see what we have in him for the future” (to see if in fact he could be that Franchise Quarterback).
“Franchise Quarterback” is capitalized above as a snarky reference to the world of sports reporting and commentary, with its incessant invocation of a term that has become an unofficial official title … when in fact, it is an overused and misleading label.
Following the 2014 season the Browns organization turned in a decidedly different direction. And who knows, perhaps the seeds for a new approach were planted even before the season ended. At any rate, whereas there was previously little specific reference to a team-building philosophy, a new, well-articulated vision was being expressed. First, there were numerous references to a “best player available” approach to not only the draft, but as a perpetual process of seeking better players at every position, an ongoing search to upgrade the team whenever possible.
Second, there was a frank acknowledgement of the absolute necessity of building a rugged, dominating defense and a strong offensive line and running game as the foundational pillars of a successful NFL team.
By putting this architecture into place, did the Browns de-emphasize the position of quarterback? Well, yes and no. On the one hand, if the organization had gone into the 2014 draft with the same vision they had going into the 2015 draft, it seems doubtful they would have drafted Johnny Manziel. In several ways, Manziel was a risky selection. As most successful NFL quarterbacks go, being on the small side isn’t a guarantee of failure, but it’s clearly a risky attribute. Furthermore, Manziel’s undisciplined style of play and undisciplined personal habits all seem anathema to kind of players the Browns have since been accumulating and to the “play like a Brown” motto that is so often referenced by the team.
On the other hand, this is not to say that the Browns see the quarterback position as on a par with, say, free safety or tight end. It just seems they now have a clearer point of view on how interdependent the QB’s performance is with the rest of the roster.
After the 2014 season ended, the Browns did not re-sign Brian Hoyer. They did sign Josh McCown. It was a transaction that was roundly disparaged as inept and inadequate and there have been few observers who think of McCown as a serious, even temporary, answer for the most important position on the field. The best that could be said, initially, of the signing was, “Oh well, we’ll go 2-14 and get a top first round pick for a real quarterback.”
Lately, however, there are some glimmers of a more positive outlook.
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The Browns have been involved in three separate team activities on the practice field since the draft: the three-day rookie minicamp, May 8-10, the ten-session organized team activities (OTAs), May 26-June 12, and the three-day mandatory mini-camp, June 16-18. During this period, head coach Mike Pettine, offensive coordinator John DeFilippo and quarterbacks coach Kevin O’Connell have all been available for questions about the team and all have been remarkably consistent about the anticipated role of Josh McCown as the No. 1 QB, at least heading into training camp. Nevertheless, questions about quarterbacks continue to dominate.
Going back to his May 8 press conference following day one of the Browns’ rookie minicamp, Mike Pettine was asked 33 questions. Let’s break them down:
To start with, there were six brief Q&As about the number of participants in the rookie minicamp, whether anyone stood out and how the new players might eventually affect team strength. The first question about a specific player was regarding La’el Collins, who went undrafted and was signed by the Dallas Cowboys. By the end of the questioning, Collins was the subject of 6 of the 33 questions.
There were also a total of five questions about Tom Brady, under-inflated footballs, and the NFL report by attorney Ted Wells.
Of course, no press conference would be a Browns press conference without being dominated by questions about quarterbacks and May 8 was no exception. Pettine was asked 13 times about QB issues. Let’s break those down: Three regarding Connor Shaw, four regarding Johnny Manziel, five regarding Josh McCown, and one regarding who’s in the No. 2 slot on the QB depth chart (No one, at the time, it turns out). The mystery of the month was why the total absence of questions regarding Thad Lewis. We may never know.
The Browns drafted an interesting variety of 12 players a few days earlier. None of them was a quarterback, and the only specific Browns player who was the subject of a question and not a quarterback was Cameron Erving. This is rather curious, because Josh McCown was signed to a three-year deal more than three months earlier on March 2 and, although no one at the time called him “The Franchise Quarterback” or even the 2015 regular season starter, the Browns made it pretty clear they saw McCown as the presumptive No. 1 guy for the near term. The Browns also made it clear they felt McCown could thrive under the right conditions. It is those “right conditions” that the Browns have been striving, of late, to get right.
McCown has been in the NFL since 2002, save for one season with the Hartford Colonials of the United Football League in 2010. He was the quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2014. Tampa Bay went 2-14 last year, scoring 277 points against their opponents’ 410. McCown worked behind an offensive line ranked a dismal 25th overall in 2014. They were dead last in penalties, 10th in run blocking, and 26th in pass blocking. The Browns went 7-9, scoring 299 points to their opponents’ 337 points. Cleveland’s O-line ranked 6th overall, 16th in penalties, 7th in run blocking and 2nd in pass blocking. (All OL stats per ProFootballFocus) And it is widely assumed that the loss of Alex Mack during the season put a serious dent in those offensive line stats.1
For the five seasons in which McCown has played significant minutes (with Arizona, Oakland, Chicago and Tampa Bay), his teams’ records have totaled 25-55. In 2013, with the best team he’s played for, the 8-8 Chicago Bears, McCown had a quarterback rating of 109.0, which is quite good. Only Tony Romo and Aaron Rodgers had a higher rating than that for the 2014 season. For those other four seasons, however, McCown’s rating averaged 72.
With Josh McCown’s arrival in Cleveland, we have perhaps the makings of a most compelling case study, a way to provide an answer to that “chicken or the egg” question that Ray Farmer alluded to in his press conference just prior to the draft. He wondered out loud, did Tom Brady make the Patriots’ offense great? Or did the Patriots great coach, excellent defense and solid offensive line greatly maximize the potential of the unheralded, sixth-round draft pick?
On May 26 at the beginning of OTAs, Mike Pettine was asked how much he knew about Josh McCown before free agency and what what McCown has been like in meetings with the offense:
“To be honest, I did not know very much about him, but researched him heading into free agency. Then, talked to a lot of people that had worked with him or knew him, then just the experience when he was in here – you could tell this guy loves football. He’s all about team. All he wants to do is win, ultra-competitive. He’s been rock solid in the meetings, very on point with his preparation. We didn’t bring him here to be a mentor, but that’s just who he is. He doesn’t know any different. He’s been as advertised.”
And on whether it bothers McCown to have been told that the offense wants to take pressure off of the quarterback by running the ball:
“I think he sees that as potentially a way to win football games. I think virtually any quarterback in the league, if we said, ‘Hey, we want to get you in second-and-5 and not second-and-11. We want to get you in third-and-2 and not third-and-8,’ I think they’d all be appreciative of that.”
On some of Pettine’s first impressions of McCown on the field:
“Just how his preparation helped him on the field, just knowing the play call and where everybody is supposed to be and if somebody was misaligned that he could get it corrected. Defensively, threw a lot of looks at him that he was able to kind of use…Quarterbacks have tools in the tool box, as far as changing protection and re-identifying. There are different things we can get in and get out of based on the defensive look, and he handled that very well.”
On June 11, during OTAs, Kevin O’Connell had this to say about Josh McCown:
“I really like everything Josh has done. He has been exactly what I know I had hoped and I don’t want to speak for anyone else, but I think what everyone hoped he would be. A guy that can come in and not only command the offense, but he has assumed a leadership role on this football team. I think that’s very important. He has really done that everywhere he has been, no matter what role he has been in. He has always kind of assumed that locker room leadership role and I think guys have responded to that. As far as playing the position, Josh is a talented guy. That’s my job and coach Flip and the entire offensive staff, to put him in a situation to be successful. Just like we are going to try to do with all of our quarterbacks no matter what the depth chart looks like. That’s what our job is and we are going to try to do that the best we can.”
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When training camp opens in Berea next month, Josh McCown will have just turned 36 years old (on July 4). A few weeks later, Tom Brady will turn 38. Peyton Manning will begin the 2015 season at age 39. Drew Brees, 36. Tony Romo, 35. Ben Roethlisberger, 33.
On June 18 after completion of the three-day mandatory minicamp, John DeFilippo praised McCown at length.
“I’ve been very, very impressed with Josh. Josh and I talk about it all the time: He’s a better quarterback now than he was in 2007. I think he’s much better. Again, I don’t like to speak for the players, but I think he’ll tell you the same thing. I haven’t seen anything from an arm strength standpoint, from an athletic standpoint to tell me that his game has declined at all. He is much better in situational football, a much smarter quarterback than he was in 2007. That comes with time. He’s played a lot of football. I’ve been very, very pleased with Josh. Obviously, the intangibles with Josh are as good as any quarterback in the league in terms of his leadership, in terms of being a good person. All of those things that you’re looking for in a starting quarterback, Josh McCown has.”
McCown says this Browns offensive line is the best he has ever been associated with. Not only is he impressed by the physical talent on the line, he also thinks the group has a particularly savvy understanding of the game. That’s his opinion and, no doubt, it was a major reason he signed with Cleveland.
Josh McCown has thrived under the right conditions. True, he hasn’t very often been on teams where the right conditions existed, but he sounds like someone who thinks he just may have signed on with a team that is about to blossom.
Those who cover the Browns and have the opportunity to ask questions of Ray Farmer, Mike Pettine, and the assistant coaches seem far more curious about the status of Johnny Manziel than of any other player on the roster. In fact some of the questions have been repeated so many times, in so many different ways, one wonders if some of those reporters own stock in Manziel…or have a large wager on his future in the league. One of the more humorous queries was, “Is Manziel closer to being the No. 1 quarterback or the No. 3 quarterback?”
However, with these early opportunities to study Josh McCown on the field and to hear his coaches answering questions about him, some observers are actually beginning to offer some deserved (if grudging) praise. He is first and foremost a team player. He is very well prepared. He commands the huddle and has assumed a leadership position on the field and in the locker room. He is in great shape and may be more mobile than many younger quarterbacks. He has an excellent arm, gets rid of the ball quickly and can throw the deep ball.
After signing McCown and later adding Thad Lewis, did the Browns continue to pursue other possibilities for the quarterback position? If even one of the several reports was accurate, it would appear the Browns were, in fact, maneuvering to make another move. But given Ray Farmer’s insistence that every position is always in play, that the Browns will always be striving to get the best players they can, at every position, this shouldn’t come as a shock. Let’s face it, if the Browns have continued to explore any and all possibilities for the QB position, it’s not because they regret the signing of Josh McCown. More and more they seem to like him just fine.
As for Ray Farmer, it has been said that his career may come to be defined, more than anything else, by the high-profile selection of the celebrity Johnny Manziel, the highly publicized first-round pick. But Mike Pettine was surely speaking for the entire organization when he said on June 17, “Once guys are here in the building, we don’t get too wrapped up in how they were acquired.”
Would it be all that shocking, then, if Ray Farmer’s low-profile signing of Josh McCown, wearing number 13, becomes one of the high-profile stories of the year?
- From PFF: When Alex Mack went down, Nick McDonald got 481 snaps at center. It did not go well… at all. Truth be told, anyone who got snaps at center struggled after the loss of Mack. [↩]
13 Comments
Fantastic. And, inexcusable that any press conference can have 33 questions without any about Danny Shelton as he is just a joy.
Danny Shelton won’t sell papers of get clicks which tells you all you need to know.
That is unless Danny somehow produces 8 – 10 sacks per year.
I’d be happy with him consuming to blockers and improving the run defense but sure if he wants to pile up the sacks as well go for it!
“He is much better in situational football, a much smarter quarterback than he was in 2007. That comes with time. He’s played a lot of football. I’ve been very, very pleased with Josh. Obviously, the intangibles with Josh are as good as any quarterback in the league in terms of his leadership, in terms of being a good person. All of those things that you’re looking for in a starting quarterback, Josh McCown has.”
I’ve been as “pro-Manziel” as anyone can reasonably be, but this quotation is the “anti-Manziel” assessment, isn’t it? It’s almost like, in going after the FA that ended up being McCown, Ray Farmer told his staff, “Find me the exact opposite of Johnny.”
Not once in this article did I read the terms “poise,” “moxie,” or “it factor.” Ipso facto, McCown cannot be a franchise QB.
6-10 here we come!
Clearly you are still hung over from the Cavaliers season! 😉
https://p.gr-assets.com/540×540/fit/hostedimages/1412679334/11406278.gif
That article made an Oliver Stone film seem like a Web short.
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You’re joking, right?
Absolutely joking.