- When you cover a team, no matter what the sport, the level or the league, a big part of your job is to not look so much at what coaches and players say, but how they say it.
It’s called reading between the lines, and it’s the ultimate truth detector.
It was interesting doing that while listening to Browns head coach Hue Jackson and quarterbacks DeShone Kizer and Kevin Hogan after Sunday’s 17-14 loss to the New York Jets at FirstEnergy Stadium.
A lot of what they said didn’t seem to make much sense.
A lot of what they said didn’t seem to be truth – not out-and-out lies, really, for I would never want to accuse of anyone other than former Browns head coach Eric Mangini of that, but not the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help you God, either. Parts – important ones – of the stories were conspicuously missing.
A lot of what they said contradicted other things that were said.
There was so much confusing gobbledygook and double-speak, in fact, that it was if they were all competing to try to do the best imitation of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
What they were all saying – in so many words, or trying not to say, as it were – is what is now painfully obvious to everyone else. And is that the Browns, along with a miserable 0-5 record, now have a quarterback controversy on their hands.
Throughout the expansion era, beginning at the beginning when it involved Tim Couch and Kelly Holcomb, the Browns have had a quarterback controversy. So, then, it only makes sense to have one again.
On a day that rookie defensive Myles Garrett got a sack on his first play as a pro, Jackson sacked Kizer at halftime after the Browns, behind 3-0, botched four scoring opportunities, two on turnovers and two on missed field goals. Hogan came on and played pretty well, but he didn’t win the game, which is the sole job of the quarterback.
Jackson said he will have to look at the tape to decide who will start next Sunday against the Texans in Houston, then said that “right now,” Kizer is the starter.
As for the media members and fans, they all know already who the starter should be, and they will let you know not just this week, but for weeks to come.
What do I think?
That Jackson has opened a can of worms that, no matter how hard he tries, he’ll never be able to close. And that’s not good.
