About 24 hours before Sunday’s regular-season opener against the Philadelphia Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field, the Browns got some great news when Executive Vice President of Football Vice President Sashi Brown said Friday that Robert Griffin III will get a long look this season – and perhaps even for a couple of seasons – to see if he’s the answer at quarterback.
Does this mean that Griffin is indeed the answer? No, not at all. He may be, and he may not be. That remains to be seen.
It simply means that the Browns finally get it – that they finally understand they can’t continue to go through quarterbacks like water. They’ve got to get someone they think is a talented player, coach him up, put him in there and support him and nurture him as he goes through the inevitable ups and downs that come with learning the pro game and trying to play it well consistently.
The Browns obviously like RG3 a lot — a whole lot, in fact. They think he can be that guy. But the only way to know for sure is to give him a real chance.
It’s great that the Browns are doing this, that and the other to build their roster at all the other positions. That’s obviously important since football is such a team game.
But until the Browns figure out – really, truly figure out – the quarterback position, they’ll never get to where they want to be. So they want to throw every resource they have at the process of developing Griffin.
There are many who say that Griffin will not make it. They say it confidently, as if they know so.
That’s silly. Griffin has been to great heights in the NFL, and to incredible lows. With that wide range of work, it’s impossible to say, exactly, what he’ll do.
But if he has a chance to make it, then he’s with the man in Browns head coach Hue Jackson who can make it happen. Jackson’s specialty is quarterbacks. He knows how to create them.
And he knows it takes some time, and patience.
Jackson also has Brown believing that.
That they’re on the same page concerning such a crucial part of this total rebuild puts this regime light years ahead of the previous one, the contentious principals of which chose to not even read out of the same book.
