They say that in many cases, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Such is the case with Hunter Rison, the son of former Browns wide receiver Andre Rison.
You remember Andre Rison, don’t you? The Browns signed him in free agency in 1995 — for $17 million over four years, an amount so outlandish that it sent nearly-bankrupt owner Art Modell scurrying around town until he found a bank that would loan him the money — in hopes that his incredible pass-catching and playmaking ability would be enough to get the team over the top and to its first Super Bowl berth.
The Browns had finished 11-5 in 1994 and earned a wild-card playoff spot. But they lacked explosive wideouts, a fact that was made all too clear when rookie Derrick Alexander, the team’s first-round pick in the 1994 NFL Draft who led the Browns in receiving with 48 catches for 828 yards and a 17.3 yards-per-reception average, dropped two passes thrown right into his hands by Vinny Testaverde on the first three plays from scrimmage and started the club down a slippery slope in a 29-9 playoff loss at Pittsburgh.
Rison was like no one the Browns had. He had caught between 81 and 93 passes the previous five seasons, including 81 for 1,088 yards and eight touchdowns in 1994 while with the Atlanta Falcons. The year before that, he had grabbed 15 scoring passes.
But he was a freelancer. He ran the prescribed route when he felt like it.
From that standpoint, then, he was a square peg trying to be fit into a round hole with the Browns, whose receivers were asked to run to specific spots on the field. Any deviation from that was frowned upon by head coach Bill Belichick and offensive coordinator Steve Crosby, who, when I sat in his office interviewing him in the offseason, all but told me he wanted absolutely no part of Rison. Yet the Browns brought him into town anyway with all the pomp and circumstance usually reserve for a head of state.
Plus Rison was a freelancer personally as well, a free spirit who didn’t want to be told how to run his life. Indeed, he was as explosive off the field as on it. It seemed he was always one step ahead o f the law. For example, his girlfriend, a hip-hop artist, got mad at him and burned his mansion down. Now that;’s a lovers’ quarrel on steroids.
It didn’t take long for Rison’s relationship with the team and, in particular, the no-nonsense Belichick, to turn into a sideshow. But as soon as the middle of the season came and Modell shocked the world by announcing that he was going to move the Browns to Baltimore following the year, Rison ceased to be a story. He didn’t behave any better, mind you, but he just was no longer relevant — he was yesterday’s news, as it were — in comparison to the tsunami that was crashing into Cleveland alongside him.
Like his dad, Hunter Rison is a wide receiver who played at Skyline High School in Ann Arbor, in the shadow of Michigan Stadium. home of the Michigan Wolverines. A four-star prospect in the class of 2017 with offers from Alabama and Oklahoma, among others, he committed in June to Michigan State, where his dad played before being a first-round draft choice of the Indianapolis Colts in 1989. Then last November, Hunter Rison said that he was de-committing and reopening his recruitment.
The story looped back to the starting line last Friday when he announced that he was committing once again to MSU.
Who knows how or why Hunter Rison said goodbye to the Spartans and then said hello to them again in short order. Even if we had heard the reason, it probably wouldn’t have made any sense. That’s the way it is with the Risons. They live life a little differently.
But to be honest, we should cut Hunter Rison a little slack. He is still just a junior in high school, and young guys sometimes do crazy things. So he may well grow out of it.
Or, then again, he may never grow out of it, which is exactly the problem that his dad, who turned 49 years old two weeks ago, has carried with him into adulthood, a fact that longtime Browns fans know all too well.
