At $16 million, quarterback Brock Osweiler’s contract is the highest on the Browns and tied for the 18th-highest in the NFL this year.
Good for him. Who among us would not have taken that kind of money when he signed with his former team, the Houston Texans?
It didn’t work out for him, or the Texans, who, after he could not help lead them through the AFC playoffs last season, were only too happy to dump him off to the Browns in an offseason trade.
But Browns fans are smart – the smartest and the best in the league, in my estimation – and they completely understand what happened in Houston, and why. They’ve heard all the negative critiques of Osweiler from the so-called experts.
And after seeing through all the fake smiles and backhanded compliments from Hue Jackson when he’s asked about Osweiler, they know the Browns head coach really doesn’t want him. The analytics guys, led by Sashi Brown, made the move because it landed them the Texans’ second-round draft pick next season.
The fans – and Jackson – are hoping that some other quarterback-needy team takes Osweiler off the Browns’ hands. They thought it would happen immediately after the trade last March, or perhaps in succeeding weeks. But here it is a little over two weeks before the start of training camp on July 27 and Osweiler is still here, getting seemingly more firmly entrenched with each passing day.
Browns quarterbacks have tended to get hurt – a lot – in this expansion era, so maybe the team will need Osweiler at some point. No one – except for possibly Osweiler – wants it to get that point, since Osweiler is currently the third-stringer and his insertion into the lineup will mean that both Cody Kessler, the presumed starter, and rookie DeShone Kizer, who was taken by the Browns in the second round of the NFL Draft to have a shot at someday being the franchise quarterback, will have had something negative – an injury or poor play – happen to them.
Osweiler is not in the Browns’ future. Kessler likely isn’t, either, as the long-term starter, and Kizer, as mentioned, might be. So if Osweiler is playing, the Browns are just spinning their wheels in a variety of ways. They’re wasting their time. They’re not getting better now, or for down the road, when it should really count as this team will, according to the plan, start to mature and come together. It will still be a rebuilding season in 2017.
So, then, Osweiler can’t really help the Browns. Period.
None of this is lost on Browns fans, who may retaliate by making Osweiler this year’s whipping boy. Every team has a whipping boy every year, and Osweiler is the Browns’ version for 2017.
The right guard or the strong safety or the long snapper can be the whipping boy, but, for the good of the team as well as the player, it can’t be the quarterback. He handles the ball on every play – he is the offensive coach on the field in playing the most important position in team sports – and if he feels the fans aren’t behind him, it could become more and more of an untenable situation with each incomplete pass that he throws and the cascade of boos it will encourage.
The fans on the road won’t care, for they hate everybody on the visiting team, but in games at FirstEnergy Stadium, it will make for a home-field disadvantage.
As they say, all the money in the world can’t buy you happiness.
