Losing your starting quarterback to a Week One injury is never a good thing. Except in Cleveland, where some in the Browns organization think it could be.
That’s the word from Adam Schefter of ESPN, who reports that some in the Browns building think Robert Griffin III’s injury could turn out to be a good thing for the franchise because coach Hue Jackson was too focused on fixing Griffin. Those (unnamed) people think that with Griffin hurt, Jackson will move on to building for the future, and Griffin is not part of that future.
If that’s the case, it suggests that Jackson isn’t on the same page as the analytics gurus in the front office, which has been reported before. It sounds like Jackson believed that Griffin could be the Browns’ long-term franchise quarterback, but the front office saw him as a stopgap until a long-term franchise quarterback can be identified.
Could that long-term franchise quarterback be third-round rookie Cody Kessler? The report says that Kessler “is not close to being ready to play,” which means that it would be a while before the Browns would consider benching Josh McCown to give Kessler some playing time.
So for the foreseeable future, the one quarterback who definitely is not the long-term starter — McCown — will be starting, while Kessler watches from the sideline and Griffin recovers from his injury. Eventually the Browns need to identify a franchise quarterback, hopefully one that everyone in the building can agree on.