Browns head coach Mike Pettine recently said something that made me laugh out loud, but it wasn’t purposefully funny unfortunately.
Cleveland’s known glaring issue at this point is the fact that they don’t have a QB that they can trust. Of course, a lot of teams in the NFL deal with this problem; but not many of them have a young man who just spent 10 weeks in rehab or a 35 year old quarterback who managed a measly 1-10 record as a starter last year.
Given this issue and the fact that there are no quick fixes in the League without a miracle draft pick, Mike Pettine has decided to roll with the punches and attempt to “minimize the importance of the quarterback”. He literally said that.
“We’re very confident in the guys in that room,” Pettine said. “We are. We’re very confident in the guys coaching them, I’m very confident in the plan that we’re going to build and I’m thrilled with the players we’re putting on the field around the quarterback. I’ve talked about this from the beginning — that you want to minimize the importance of the quarterback.
“He doesn’t have to walk out there and ‘here’s the whole game, put it on your back, go ahead and convert second-and-long, go ahead and convert third-and-long, go ahead and bring us back from two scores.’ To me, when you play with leads and you’re in manageable situations, that job gets a lot easier.”
Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not saying every team needs a Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers. They simply need your prototypical floor general that will lead the team and make the right decisions quickly with precision.
There have been plenty of teams that have won by minimizing their QB’s role (Brad Johnson won a Super Bowl, guys) but to think that you can cover up for the fact that you have two men that are unpredictable and touch the ball on every down? That’s a little foolish.
Let’s see if Cleveland can pull it off, though, it’d be interesting to see the Browns flourish.
H/T SN
