Would you be OK with Cody Kessler being the Browns’ starting quarterback this season?
That’s been bandied about a lot everywhere, including on this site some time ago, and it’s starting to get a hotter and heavier. That’s because, as the 2017 NFL Draft approaches – the now three-day event begins three weeks from Thursday – it’s becoming more and more apparent that none of the available quarterbacks, even the top-rated ones, is going to be even a franchise-enhancer, let alone a franchise-changer.
Those are two different things, by the way. A lot of quarterbacks can make a franchise a little better, but few can change a franchise the way the Browns – and all the other NFL teams – want it to do. And that’s for the quarterback to put the club on its shoulders and take it to the Super Bowl – more than once, with more than one victory.
For a team such as the Browns that has never even been to the Super Bowl, let alone winning, that’s the only evaluation that matters in this quarterback search.
Kessler is in the former group – as an enhancer — at least right now and likely for the foreseeable future as well. He has enough flaws – lack of arm strength to throw the deep ball – to keep him in that tight little box.
But he can do some good things, enough to get the Browns through next season as they continue to build. Who knows? In that he will be entering only his second season, he might surprise everyone, but I don’t think so.
However, working in his favor is that Kessler is already on the roster, so he’s not going to cost one of those precious draft picks, particularly the five in the top 65 overall, which can instead be used to fill holes elsewhere. And, following last season’s 1-15 finish, there are enough holes elsewhere that need attention.
He has already played a season, so he knows the Browns, their offense and the players on it, and the league, especially the AFC North. And the players and coaches know him.
He has already been working this offseason toward the 2017 regular season – with his team and for his team, not in trying to prove to clubs they should draft him – so he’ll be ready to go when the season begins.
Wanting to use Brock Osweiler ahead of Kessler is a vote for the Browns remaining in neutral. And more important than that, the head coach, Hue Jackson absolutely, positively doesn’t want to use Osweiler.
Osweiler already is what he is and what, even in a perfect world, what he swill ever be – a mediocre player. He couldn’t succeed with the ready-to-win-big Houston Texans last season, so what makes anyone think he can help the Browns, who are at least two years away from being at that stage.
So, with all that having been said, we reiterate: Would you be OK with Cody Kessler as the Browns’ starting quarterback this season?
Well, would you?
At least now, it – that — could certainly happen.
