There’s little question that the Browns will be addressing the quarterback position in next week’s draft, but no one knows when they’ll be selecting a player to join Brian Hoyer on the depth chart.
Coach Mike Pettine will be one of the men involved in making the decision about when the Browns move for a quarterback and Pettine said Tuesday that he prefers to have a quarterback sit as a rookie before taking over as a starter. Pettine has experience coaching on teams quarterbacked by Kyle Boller, Joe Flacco, Mark Sanchez and E.J. Manuel as rookies from day one, which has left him with the feeling that it is“a rare guy that can handle that and he has to have a great supporting cast in order to do it.”
That’s left Pettine feeling that the best course of action for the Browns would be to use the fourth overall pick elsewhere.
“That’s been a big part of the discussion in the draft room. That’s a position that we know we’re going to need to address, and you talk about where you’re going to do it and the impact that it’s going to have on the rest of the team,” Pettine said, via the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “Certainly it’s an ideal situation if you can get that quarterback later in the draft and that way you’re drafting a position player at four. But we’re in the business of staying true to our sequence, that if our fourth-best player or somebody rated above that is there at the fourth pick that we’ll feel comfortable turning the card in regardless of what the position is.”
Ideal situations rarely come to fruition in the NFL draft or anywhere else, but Pettine’s hopes of sitting a rookie quarterback are going to be a lot easier if Cleveland makes another pick at No. 4 because fourth picks are usually called on to play right away regardless of the position they play.