Cleveland Browns: Destroying A Quarterback, The DeShone Kizer Debacle
DeShone Kizer was unceremoniously waived by the Las Vegas Raiders this week. The Cleveland Browns second round pick of the 2017 NFL Draft is 24 years old and he's been on three teams in four years. While first round picks Myles Garrett and David Njoku are having their fifth-year options being picked up by the Browns and Jabrill Peppers by the the New York Giants, Kizer's career in the NFL may well be over, going out with a whimper; a combination of a poor decision and gross mishandling by the team that selected him.
Kizer opted to declare for the 2017 NFL Draft with the possibility he could be a first round pick. And going in the second round certainly wasn't a failure. It was probably still early for him, but it was far more reasonable. He wasn't ready to be in the NFL. He wasn't particularly good in college at Notre Dame. Kizer had great size, mobility and tools for the position including a strong arm and some truly special throws along the way that made him an attractive prospect. Kizer was selected by a team that seemed to understand where he was in his development, save for the head coach, Hue Jackson.
When he was drafted, Sashi Brown, the Executive Vice President of the team at the time noted the team intended to let Kizer sit and develop, trying to put him in a position to succeed. But as minicamps and training camp got going, Hue Jackson kept talking up Kizer's ability and progress, which proved to be hollow excuses to tell everyone how great he was as a coach.
The team released Robert Griffin III, the team's veteran quarterback option they signed the year before who missed much of the year due to injury. Josh McCown was released as Jackson thought he'd be a really great coach, but didn't think he was good enough to play any longer. McCown signed with the New York Jets and had a year the Browns would've killed for in 2017. Efficient, he helped a pretty bad Jets team win five games of the thirteen games he played that year.
Last but not least, the Browns let go of Brock Osweiler. Osweiler was acquired in a trade with the Houston Texans as a massive salary dump that allowed the Browns to move up from the fourth round of the 2018 NFL Draft to the second round. Osweiler was already fully paid for the 2017 season, regardless of what the Browns would do. Cutting him didn't save the team a dime and keeping him wouldn't have cost them a dollar more. Nevertheless, cut.
Despite the fact he had a very young, very raw quarterback, Jackson and the Browns released any meaningful potential support system within the quarterback room in the form of veterans, moving on from Griffin, McCown and Osweiler in favor of second-year quarterbacks Cody Kessler and Kevin Hogan. Kessler was a third round pick by the Browns in 2016 and Hogan was a fifth round pick in 2016, picked by the Kansas City Chiefs, who they had waived.
Jackson believed in his ability to teach and coach Kizer so much that he thought he was all that Kizer needed. In some ways, it seemed Jackson wanted his voice to be the only one they heard. David Lee, the quarterbacks coach of the Browns in 2017 came out and said he thought Kizer wasn't ready. Along with the front office, one of Jackson's own assistants didn't think Kizer was ready to play. Jackson ignored them because he knew better. Lee was let go after the 2017 season.
Kizer had a pretty good debut in preseason against the New Orleans Saints. He completed 11 of 18 passes for 184 yards and a touchdown, including a 45-yard touchdown pass to Jordan Payton and a 52-yard pass to Richard Mullaney. It was against a third string defense, but it was a positive step for Kizer. It should've been the type of competition he faced that year and little else.
Kizer went 8 for 13 for 74 yards and ran for 35 yards against the New York Giants the second week of preseason, playing against the second string. Despite actually doing very little, the fanfare and anticipation grew. Against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Kizer completed just six passes on 18 attempts and threw an interception.
This should have been the wake up call Jackson needed. However talented he might have thought Kizer was, it was clear he wasn't there yet, which is no shame for Kizer as a player or Jackson as a coach. But Jackson had gotten so drunk on his own ambition and unwavering belief he could will Kizer into a franchise quarterback, he couldn't turn back and announced him the starter for the season.
For so much of camp and early into the 2017 season, Jackson was effusive with praise for Kizer, saying he had the tools to be a franchise quarterback and that he was the man to get that out of him. After the Pittsburgh Steelers game to start the season, Jackson was convinced everything was going to click into place and Kizer would get better and better throughout the year.
Going 20 of 30 for 222 yards with a touchdown and an interception in a game the Browns lost 21-18 to the Steelers, it seemed like maybe Kizer could figure it out. Unfortunately, that game was arguably the best Kizer played that season and the rest of the year was a slow, painful trickle downward.
And while Jackson's delusions with Kizer were misguided and he was setting this poor 21-year old kid to fail as a rookie, it didn't make Jackson a bad guy. It wasn't until Jackson came to the conclusion that Kizer wasn't the franchise quarterback he built him up to be, that he proclaimed to the world he could create that he became one. When Jackson made that turn, it revealed a truly ugly side.
Kizer didn't make any proclamations. He was humble throughout the process, just trying to find his way in the NFL and adjust to that life. It really did seem too much for him initially, because he was a 21-year old kid born in Toledo and had the hopes of an entire fanbase resting on him, amplified by his coach out there with a megaphone telling anyone who would listen how great he was going to be.
Fans are allowed to be unrealistic and overzealous in their belief that a rookie quarterback who completed a third of his passes against an NFL defense could go out there and start. The head coach wasn't. And the head coach wasn't supposed to actively destroy any potential support system around him in the process, save for himself.
That's when the yo-yoing began. Kizer was benched. And at that point, there seemed like maybe an epiphany was reached, that Kizer wasn't ready, that he needed to learn and simply adjust to this new NFL reality. But as losses piled up and Jackson realized that the quarterback room he assembled was woefully inadequate to the task of starting, he went through the quarterbacks like a batting order, going from one to the next.
These three young quarterbacks were just trying to survive and they are being put into and taken out of games to the point where it lost all meaning. It might as well have been a random number generator each week.
The Browns finish 0-16. All these quarterbacks were effectively damaged goods in Cleveland for it and moved to other teams, almost as acts of mercy. Kizer was traded to the Green Bay Packers for Damarious Randall. Kessler was traded to the Jacksonville Jaguars for a conditional seventh round pick in 2019. Hogan was waived.
The NFL is a cold, often unforgiving machine that rolls on regardless of how many young men it chews up and spits out along the way. It's possible that Kizer was never going to be successful in the NFL based on his skill set and the issues he had coming into the NFL. His stints with the Packers and Raiders could be evidence of that. It's also possible that Kizer could've been drafted to a team with a coach that cared about the person first and the player second. And had he been developed for a few years, he'd be 24 years with three seasons under his belt, just 11 months older than the top pick of the 2020 NFL Draft Joe Burrow. There might be a team that would be excited to have him. Regardless of the truth, DeShone Kizer deserved better than Hue Jackson.
