Browns to take another quarterback?
When the 2016 NFL Draft rolls around, nobody is going to be talking about the team with the first-overall pick. The Tennessee Titans are picking in the top two selections for the second consecutive year, after taking quarterback Marcus Mariota a year ago.
Tennessee certainly needs the help but there is a complete lack of storylines. There is no huge name at the top of the draft class and the Titans play in small market. The head coach is Mike Mularkey and the team is completely void of stars, unless you count Mariota as having already emerged.
Enter the Cleveland Browns. Cleveland is everything that Tennessee is not. While the Browns are not exactly teeming with superstars in their own right, they have become a massive lightning rod both within and outside of the National Football League. Nobody even remotely aware of sports is missing out on this circus, whether it be about quarterback Johnny Manziel and his forays into Las Vegas nightlife, or owner Jimmy Haslam and his outrageous way of handling the franchise.
The Browns are made for television, and with a new head coach in Hue Jackson and a new general manager in Sashi Brown, this is a beautiful slice of reality TV. Brown is completely new to the scene, basically being dropped into this mess head first without a speck of experience in this realm. Meanwhile, Jackson comes in with a year of prior head coaching experience with the Oakland Raiders back in 2010, an equally dysfunctional franchise at the time.
Jackson has already made it very clear that he believes the team needs a quarterback. Of course, that is a major issue for the franchise considering it just wasted a first-round pick on Manziel in 2014, and has only gotten a handful of starts out of him. Cleveland also blew a first-round selection on Brandon Weeden earlier in the decade, so we could be seeing something incredible.
The Browns, should they decide to pull the trigger on a quarterback with the second-overall pick, would be taking their third first-round quarterback in the last five years. Cleveland has already taken two of the worst busts in recent memory, and now is hoping that the third time is the charm.
Considering the likely options, the Browns will be choosing from Memphis quarterback Paxton Lynch or California’s Jared Goff. Goff is clearly the more polished of the two but some say there is more intrigue surrounding Lynch, who tore up the Ole Miss Rebels in Oxford but was crushed by the mediocre Auburn Tigers in the Birmingham Bowl to end his college career.
It seems like regardless of who Cleveland takes, he will be terrible. Hopefully, the Browns finally get it right.
