There are win-wins. Both sides get something of value – something that they want.
And then there are … well, lose-loses, if there can be such a phrase. There can, for it’s when both sides – let’s say it together now – lose. They get nothing of value. They get nothing that they want, or need.
Such – that is, the latter scenario — is the case with wide receiver Terrelle Pryor, who eschewed much more lucrative offers from the Browns to sign a one-year, free-agent deal with the Washington Redskins for $8 million, $6 million of which is guaranteed, with the remaining $2 being in incentives.
Why Pryor would do this is anyone’s guess. Actually, that’s just a paint-with-a-broad-brush saying that doesn’t apply here. We do know why he would do this. His agents – apparently knuckleheads who misjudged the market like a wide receiver misjudging the trajectory of a pass – caused the ball to hit Pryor right in the facemask. When that happens, it never ends well. And it didn’t here.
As such, Pryor fumbled away the chance to make a lot more money by going to Washington. A lot of people lose a lot of money by going to Washington, but that’s another story for another time.
Cleveland really is the best location in the nation – and it certainly would have been for Pryor.
The Browns, as mentioned, are losers here, too, in this situation. They are worse off for not having Pryor. He had 1,007 receiving yards last year, which is the ninth-highest total in Browns history. And he did it while catching passes from the quarterback du jour, none of whom are going to the Pro Football Hall of Fame anytime soon – unless, of course, they pay the $25 admission price.
The Browns were a franchise- and NFL-worst 1-15 in 2016. They obviously don’t have enough good players as it is and as such can ill afford to lose any good ones, especially ones like Pryor, who had no future in the NFL as a quarterback but was developed into a good wide receiver – with a really high ceiling – by the Browns, who pulled a Bill Belichick and were thinking out of the box on him, about him and for him, and themselves.
But to reach that ceiling, Terrelle Pryor is going to have to improve on his route-running, something with which he really struggled in Cleveland.
And, judging by the decision he made to let the knucklehead agents make a decision for him that he could have made himself, and done a much, much better job of it, his route-running off the field also leaves a lot to be desired.
