What happened over the last couple of days is why the Browns hired Hue Jackson as their head coach.
With Monday’s announcement that quarterback Robert Griffin III will be out for at least eight games — and likely a lot more — following his suffering a broken bone in his shoulder in Sunday’s 29-10 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles, you could just feel the air go out of the team’s balloon – as if there was much air in there to start with. It was a devastating blow to the Browns, despite what you may read or hear elsewhere.
While Josh McCown is a good pro and a good locker-room guy and will make some plays, having to use him for perhaps the rest of the season – unless he gets hurt, too – sets this team back in its seemingly never-ending search to find a quarterback.
Maybe RG3 wasn’t going to be the long-term answer. Or maybe he was. We may never know the answer to that, because while Griffin is recovering and trying to get himself ready to play again, the Browns can’t sit around idly and wait. He might be finished for good, considering his injury history. They’ve got to put on the full-court press to find another quarterback to take in the 2017 NFL Draft.
And in the meantime as well, the Browns can’t whine about losing their quarterback. Life – the season – goes on like a freight train. There are 15 games left to play over the next 3½ months. But keeping a stiff upper lip is easier said than done on a team made up mostly of young, experienced players, almost all of whom are undoubtedly still shell-shocked over Sunday’s loss of a game and Monday’s loss of the face of the franchise among the players.
This is where Jackson comes in. He’s a veteran, savvy coach who has brought in a lot of assistants just like him. They’ve seen a lot – they’ve seen just about everything, really – and their knees aren’t going to buckle in these trying times. They’re not going to panic. They’re going to dig their heels in and keep coaching these guys mentally, physically and emotionally.
Their task always was to develop as many of these young players as much as they can – to try to bring the group along as a whole. Now that job is even more important with the quarterback search scuttled for the time being.
We saw Sunday what this team was, and what almost everybody believed that it was – one with a bunch of young, talented prospects who have a long, long way to go before they are productive in the NFL . So while certainly a negative, what happened against the Eagles is not the end of the world. Rather, it’s the first step of a hard journey. If this were the end of the year and a clunker like that had happened, then it would cause for a lot more concern. But it isn’t, so the Browns have to learn from it – that’s what this season is all about every week – and move on.
As such, then, the MVP of the Browns from here on out – as if he weren’t already that before – will be Jackson, and the guys all tied for second place in that voting are his assistants. At least from that standpoint if not anything else, the Browns are ahead of the curve with their coaches. Now those coaches have got to make sure their players begin to catch up with them.
