Jim Donovan, the Browns’ outstanding longtime radio play-by-play announcer, sent me a text just before the start of Sunday’s season opener against the Philadelphia Eagles.
He ended it by writing, “Here we go!”
About 25½ hours later, the guy I call Mr. Voice could have sent the same text – with one word added to the end of it.
“Here we go again!”
That came, of course, with the announcement on Monday that Browns quarterback Robert Griffin III will miss at least eight games after suffering a fractured bone in his left shoulder in his team’s 29-10 loss.
The Browns, who have been bedeviled with a long list of quarterback injuries and problems in the expansion era, are knee-deep in it again after just one game.
It’s maddening.
The Browns really believed that with time, Griffin had a chance to develop into the quarterback they have been searching for since they were re-born in 1999. Now that process – and those hopes – are, at best, on hold.
Will RG3 come back this season? Or ever?
And when he does return – or if he does return – will he be the same? He’s been injured a lot in his career, so is this the end for him not just in Cleveland, but in the NFL?
Who knows? And no one will know for over two months – at least.
The Browns wanted RG3 to spend the season building chemistry and timing with all of the team’s young wide receivers. That will instead be built with Josh McCown delivering the ball to them.
McCown is a great guy and can, from time to time, put up some big numbers. But he’s never been a winner and, at his age (37), he’s obviously never been in the discussion for being the Browns’ long-term answer at the position.
Head coach Hue Jackson, who is the overall face of the franchise, and RG3, the face among the players, were joined at the hip as two men trying to make personal comebacks with the Browns. Jackson is the quarterback whisperer, so his success in Cleveland will be determined by his ability to find that franchise passer. And since RG3 was his hand-picked choice to get the first crack at that, this injury is a blow to Jackson.
Right now, third-round draft pick Cody Kessler is one injury away from being the starter, but he’s far from being ready to go out and play at a level that would win him the job for the foreseeable future.
So the Browns are stuck in neutral.
This season, then, is for the Browns’ many young players at all the other positions to get their feet wet – more like soaked with all the time they’re going to get. That certainly needs to happen. Their development is a big part of the club’s total rebuild. Football is the ultimate team game, after all.
But no matter how many productive wideouts or defensive front-seven personnel or players at any other spots they find this season, the Browns have absolutely no chance to get where they eventually want to go until they come up with the quarterback. It’s no more complicated than that. The quarterback is the foundation. Period. End of statement.
The Browns may well have the No. 1 overall pick in the 2017 NFL Draft, so, after all that happened Sunday and Monday, do you think they would take a quarterback if there was one worthy of being selected there?
Yeah, me, too.
Indeed, if they were already looking hard at taking a quarterback with their first pick, wherever it turns out to be, they most certainly are looking even harder at that now.
