The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Osweiler lost job to Kizer with bad play
DeShone Kizer did not win the Browns starting quarterback job as much as Brock Osweiler lost it.
Technically speaking, Kizer isn’t officially the starter for the regular season opener against the Steelers on Sept. 10 at FirstEnergy Stadium. Coach Hue Jackson on Aug. 23 announced only that Kizer will start on Aug. 26 against Tampa Bay in the third preseason game, but in his prepared statement he added, “He is certainly positioning himself well to earn the starting job heading into the regular season,” and then in his post-practice news
conference about eight hours after the announcement he sounded like the president of the DeShone Kizer fan club.
“He keeps passing every test, and there’s still another one to pass,” Jackson said. “I mean here we come this Saturday night against a good defensive football team in Tampa on the road in the heat. There are a lot of different elements he’s going to have to deal with. So here’s another opportunity. But he’s been knocking down everything I’ve put before him. So here we are.”
So here we are. Jackson said he made up his mind about Kizer “a couple weeks ago,” before the first preseason game, but just 10 days ago, quarterback coach David Lee had this to say:
“He’s a lot better than he was in the spring, but he’s still not there and he knows it.”
The justified criticism of Kizer before the second preseason game still holds; he hangs onto the ball too long as he processes the defense. He’s going to end up getting sacked, scrambling and risking injury or throwing the ball away on third down more often than a good experienced quarterback would. That isn’t a knock on Kizer. It goes along with being a rookie.
“As awesome as it is, it just means I have to work harder and try to do whatever I can to continue to have some success out on the field and hold onto this position as tight as I can,” Kizer said. “To come out here, to work hard and to earn an opportunity to be a starter here is a dream come true. There are only 32 guys who are going to step out and be starters for the third preseason week, and I am going to be one of them.”
Jackson has no other choice. Osweiler was terrible in the first two preseason games and he wasn’t much better in most of training camp.
How would Jackson sell Osweiler to the fans and to his boss, Browns owner Jimmy Haslam? The answer is he can’t.
Haslam wants to be patient after the 1-15 2016 season and see where Jackson is headed with this team, but after Osweiler played so abysmally against the Saints and Giants — a quarterback can’t succeed on two-yard dink passes all the time — Jackson had to go with the rookie, even if Kizer isn’t ready.
Kizer was playing against backups when he connected on a 52-yard pass to Richard Mullaney and the 45-yard winning touchdown pass to Jordan Payton. Still, he had to put the ball on the money.
Kizer has a strong arm. He’s athletic. He can move in the pocket and take off and run better than Osweiler. He certainly has a higher ceiling, but learning on the job is risky business, especially on a team where a quarterback has the life expectancy of a soap bubble.
“These quarterbacks only have so many hits in their bodies,” Jackson said last week. “If you put those guys out there and they start getting sacked and hit early in the year and aren’t sure how to do things correctly, then I don’t think that helps them.”
Whoever starts against the Steelers will be the 15th quarterback to open the season for the Browns since 1999, and unless it’s Cody Kessler, he will be the 27th starter in 19 years.
Kizer could have been the hero riding in on his white horse a month into the season if only Osweiler had shown a glimmer of success to justify making him the starter, but he did not. Still, Osweiler hasn’t given up hope he can still win the job. Asked what he must do for that to happen, he answered curtly:
“I think that’s a great question for the general manager,” referring to Sashi Brown, executive vice president of football operations.
Osweiler still has a slim hope of winning the regular season job because Jackson left it that way, although Jackson said Osweiler will not play against the Buccaneers.
“I can’t tell you what’s going to happen (in the opener) yet because I’ve not said for sure, without question, ‘This is our Day One starter,’ ” Jackson said, referring to Kizer. “It’s trending in that direction, but I’ve never said that. So let’s see where we get to after this week and see where we are and go from there.”
The experiment failed. The Browns now should either trade Osweiler for whatever they can get (which won’t be much) or absorb his guaranteed $16 million salary and cut him. The highest paid player on the roster should not be on the bench.