Flugel

What has haunted this team is the absolute inability to: 1) draft the right QB in the NFL Draft; and 2) put the right people around the QB they do draft. The last QB the Browns were successful drafting came out of the 1985 Supplemental Draft. Think back to how old you were when this happened. I was 21. The very next off-season, the Browns hired OC - Lindy Infante. They went from 8-8 behind Mack and Byner rushing for over 1000 yards apiece in 1985 to 12-4 with RBs combining for 117 receptions (Mack 28, Dickey 10, Byner 37, Fontenot 47) in 1986. Knowing defenses were chomping at the bits to stop Mack and Byner and blitz the cement shoed Kosar in year 2 - Infante chose to dictate the weekly chess matches. You want to zone blitz us? Ok, here's a little Herman Fontenot and Brian Brennan combining for 102 receptions almost exclusively on 3rd downs. Meanwhile, Byner and Mack could just as easily catch swing passes to the flats (which was fun to watch when that area of the defense was vacated by the designated zone blitzer). Talk about making life EASIER for a 2nd year QB - this was the best I've seen this team do in my lifetime. When Jim Harbaugh went to play QB for the Colts, he credited Infante for being the best offensive coach he had tapping what he does best. I read an article where Harbaugh said he brought a lot of what Infante taught him to use with QBs he coached. He combined that with what he learned from other coaches but emphasized Infante's main principles for QBs eased and expedited the progressions. All that to say, coaching has a profound impact on how well a QB develops as well as who you have protecting them. Watson is only going to turn 28 this year. QBs like Kurt Warner, Steve Young and Doug Williams didn't play their best football until after they were 28 years old. Rich Gannon, Brad Johnson, Fran Tarkenton and Jim Plunkett are other QBs that found more success in their later 20s/early 30s. I think I already shared in a previous thread the dreadful Terry Bradshaw's stats over his first 5-6 years he played; and got benched for guys like Terry Hanratty and Joe Gilliam. Sometimes it's needing more surrounding talent - other times it's the luck of having the right offensive mind assessing how to tweak his offense around the QB. The opposite of that is the square peg/round hole you alluded. FWIW, losing a 1st and 2nd string RT + whatever we continue to settle for at LT can lead to watching 5 different guys start at QB in 1 season. Any QB that confuses what he's here to do with thinking he's Larry Csonka initiating contact with LBers and DL - needs to be BENCHED by coaches or inevitable injury will do it for them. Coaching matters so it's a little disturbing to see them waiting until after Watson completed his 1st year here to start planning for the right system and adding coaches. Clemson and Houston were ready for Watson - can we honestly say the Browns were too?

If we want a place kicker 31 other teams wouldn't even consider signing from our practice squad - York is perfect. Let's just hope we never have to use him. We can probably sign Anthony Schwartz too if we want to stick with this mentality/philosophy.

Can we let Dee Haslam pick the QB next time?

Do you think Houston would trade CJ Stroud for Cheesecakes Mayfield? 😁 Neither do I...

I've only seen this post from him about 8 times.

Here's the thing, when a QB is drafted 1st overall - there's an expectation that was higher than he achieved. Pittsburgh drafted Kenny Pickett 22nd overall; and that fanbase wasn't exactly patient with him.

I don't want to brag; but I made it all the way to the 1st period above without crying. I gotta disagree with you about not trying to help Baker though. The FO brought Jarvis Landry here and he helped a ton. Then, they added Pro Bowl WR OBJ. Those were efforts. They also added FA Tackle Jack Conklin at RT with a big contract. The guy just hasn't been able to stay healthy. The year he did, the Browns scored 48 points in the playoffs at Pittsburgh. That same year, they drafted a LT 10th overall. They also had 2 very talent OGs here with Bitonio and Teller. After a very promising rookie year; Baker spent a lot of his 1st off-season doing countless commercials, getting married/honeymooning, and chugging beers in public at Tribe games. I think we can all agree he was distracted; and the inevitable sophomore slump followed. I wanted us to draft Baker; but every good year was followed by a bad year. That was quite the bi-polar coaster.

That's a keeper! That's what they said to the poor guy in Rome that tried to replace Julius Caesar. They called him Mark Antony until the day he died...

When we draft guys - we need to project them into the division the Browns reside in. For example, nobody holds more than Joey Porter Jr (not even Emerson). When they flag him - it's usually early on in the game so they don't have to do it the rest of the day. Looks like Jamari needs to show the coaching staff he can catch the ball when he's well covered with a corner on his hip. That's showing up in a lot of scouting reports I'm seeing. I like Tia's point above about wanting to see how he responds to press coverage and physical corners. Not everybody can do this kind of thing. That's why a change of direction kind of guy would fit nicely somewhere on our perimeter. Back when we had Eric Metcalf, we were the ONLY team had no clue how good this guy would be lining up on the perimeter in space. For his next 2-3 teams, he excelled as Wide Receiver/Flanker/Slot and everything that didn't ask him to be Eric up the middle any more. Brian Brennan wasn't bad at change of direction either on that 86 team with 12 wins.

Really appreciate you sharing all these draft profiles!!!

That summary shows us 3 years of starting between 2 good to great football programs. Why not? Depth at LT was a gigantic concern...

Thatta boy!

The 4th play from the end of this video was my fave. Check out the lead blocker. I think he woke up on Gilligan's Island...

😆 Glad to hear you had a great road trip. Good work with the pre-season depth chart. As for TE Treyton Welch - it was pretty easy to see why his teammates voted him a Captain. It's nice to have the amount of talent on-board to the extent we're just balancing the depth throughout. Given that we lost both RTs and our LT to injury last year - that might be our biggest challenge ahead. Ifedi is more of a Guard and didn't play a down last year and he could play RT in a crunch. LT kind of scares me; but there may be some opportunities to improve our depth there before the regular season kicks off. We shall see...

Indeed! Those are the 1st 2 words after "I do" in bold up top. Having said that when you're married 30 years - the frequency of using them can lessen. By then, we have all we can do to remember why we just walked into the kitchen.