Browns agree to terms with Robert Griffin III
March 24, 2016Haha to Harbaugh : Ohio State players have some fun
March 24, 2016What? You’ve got a better plan?
I’m not celebrating like I would have had the Mike Holmgren-led Cleveland Browns traded up to get Robert Griffin III in 2012, but compared to the Browns’ prospects at quarterback on the morning of Wednesday, March 24, I’m excited. RG3 is not a lock for anything. Nobody who gets beat out by Kirk Cousins can be considered a lock in terms of his NFL career. That said, this is why you hire a head coach like Hue Jackson. These are exactly the kinds of chances to take. Given where the Browns are and have been in the recent past, signing Griffin is a low-risk move for them. It’s one that should be celebrated, not because it’s guaranteed to work, but because you could spend your time doing worse things than trying to resurrect a 26-year-old who has only recently lost his way in the NFL.
This has as much to do with Hue Jackson and his staff as it does with Robert Griffin III. RG3 is just one player — albeit at the sport’s most important position — that we’ll be looking to see the coaching staff improve. We’re waiting for the Browns to find their Mickey Callaway equivalent at any position, and if the Indians were running a football team, RG3 is a starter they’d sign on a speculative deal. For the Browns’ sake, let’s hope RG3 becomes the next Scott Kazmir, you know, except maybe the Browns can keep him from leaving after they fix him up.
Many Browns fans that are against the signing of Griffin are concerned about what this might do to the Browns’ quarterback room late this summer. The idea is that a team with the No. 2 overall pick in the draft might very well draft a quarterback. I’ll wait and see on that one, even as Browns coaches were on-site for Carson Wentz’ pro day as the RG3 news broke. In the same way that you hire Hue Jackson to work with a guy like RG3, you also hire him to deal with the draft and personality-management of his players.
Based on our experiences with Pat Shurmur and Mike Pettine,1 I know it feels like an unscalable mountain. But if you’re going to hold every future coach to the same low standards as those guys, you might as well just never do anything at all. We’ll see if the Browns select a quarterback high in the draft, but maybe this signing says all you need to know about how the Browns feel about the top quarterback prospects in the 2016 NFL draft.
In the end, while I know the Griffin signing gives Browns fans consternation because they can’t see the future and desperately want to know that it’s all going to work out alright, this is a good, low-risk move for the Browns. It comes with the price tag of a small opportunity cost plus some of Jimmy Haslam’s money. The worst that happens is that the Browns add another name to the quarterback list as RG3 is pushed out the door in some amount of time. The best thing that happens is that Hue Jackson and his staff put RG3 in the best positions possible and he becomes one of the best quarterbacks in the AFC North for your Cleveland Browns.
It will only cost you a little bit of time and some of Jimmy Haslam’s money. I know you don’t care about Jimmy Haslam’s money, and I am pretty sure you’ve got the time after the last umpteen seasons. We survived two seasons of the Johnny Manziel Experience.2 We survived Pat Shurmur and Brandon Weeden as the “hope” for the Browns offense. This is a good, solid bet, whether it works or not. Bet on the percentages and keep moving. That’s what the Browns did today by signing Robert Griffin. At least for today, that feels like a good thing.
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