It's Time For the Browns to Start Johnny Football

The Cleveland Browns have a pretty solid recent track record of focusing on the future, if only because the present in Cleveland always seems to suck. The Browns have been able to maneuver around the top of the first round over the past few years in part because they were willing to give up the more valuable current asset. They traded the pick that became Julio Jones for a treasure trove of draft goodies. They traded Trent Richardson for a future first-round pick before that idea became darkly hilarious.

That they haven’t been able to take advantage of all these high draft picks is partly a matter of misfortune and partly a matter of poor evaluations. You can win a theoretical draft-pick trade on paper and still lose the trade by not actually drafting anybody good with those picks.

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So between wasted draft picks and the off-field issues that seem to have extinguished Josh Gordon’s career, the Browns don’t have much promising talent at passing game positions. This led to a renewed push by the front office to offer stud left tackle Joe Thomas around at the trade deadline. They didn’t trade him, but the fact that they gave it a shot is further proof that the Browns are already looking to next season.

In the here and now of Week 9, though, Cleveland was forced to start Johnny Manziel in their 31-10 Thursday night loss to Cincinnati. It did not go well. Manziel repeatedly reverted back to the old habits that hurt him last season. He prepared to scramble after his first read was covered. His ball placement was an issue.

The Browns were forced into this due to the multiple injuries that have sidelined starting quarterback Josh McCown, who has been a way better asset for the Browns than I ever would have imagined. McCown has 144 DYAR and a -3.1% DVOA across 277 throws—a large enough sample size to show that it isn’t completely flukey. Manziel had been markedly worse in a small sample, and that was before last week’s ugly showing against the Bengals.

But the clock has already struck midnight on whatever chances this team had of a postseason run, and the Browns appear nearly ready to accept this as a fact. The Browns are 2-7 and, as of Sunday night, dead last in the entire AFC. Even without a real overpowering team in the AFC wild card race, Cleveland is 3.5 games back with seven to play. They had, coming into Week 9, the second-hardest slate of remaining games according to Football Outsiders. Making the playoffs would take seven straight wins and an unfathomable run of luck.

So, yes: Cleveland will probably have another high draft pick come April. That’s why the Browns need to figure out exactly what will and won’t be on the grocery list when that time comes. They need to focus on their future. And that’s why, even if he’s actually worse than Josh McCown, the Browns need to start Manziel.

In other sports, tanking has become part of the culture. The 76ers have become the NBA’s version of a futures bet, effectively ceasing to operate in the present. Tanking helped the Astros secure a couple of No. 1 overall picks, and they arrived in the MLB playoffs this season years ahead of schedule.

The 49ers are probably the closest thing to a self-sabotaging team in today’s NFL. (It should be noted that they currently have a better record than the Browns.) But the NFL business model doesn’t really lend itself to this sort of tanking strategy because NFL teams are always trying out young players anyway. Every injury gives a new role to someone young. The development of late-round picks and undrafted free agents is a big part of who wins and loses. The scrapheap of older NFL players forced into involuntary retirement is enormous.

However, quarterback is a position that doesn’t really scale well to the grander theory of an NFL roster. When it comes to quarterbacks, there are solutions, stopgaps, potential solutions, and unknowns. When a franchise doesn’t have either a solution or a potential solution, job one is to find one. Cleveland needs one, and Manziel is the lone unknown of any real pedigree on their roster. It’s time to roll the dice.

I’m sure this is being fought tooth-and-nail by a coaching staff that reportedly wanted nothing to do with Manziel in the first place. The fact that Manziel is brash, that he has been in rehab, and that the NFL is still investigating a domestic dispute with his girlfriend doesn’t help. (That investigation is expected to be concluded this week.) The NFL’s investigation into Manziel There’s also the fact that no head coach wants his name attached to something he had no input on. Mike Pettine won’t purposefully decide to roll with a potentially worse option in a league where your win-loss record is both the perception of how good you are and the thing that determines how long you remain on the job.

But for the Browns, this is a very simple equation. If Manziel throws 30 times each in the next seven games, they’ll have about a half-season of games in which to evaluate him. They need to use this time to figure out if he’s the solution, a potential solution, or a stopgap on the way. Cleveland needs to see if Manziel is good enough to keep them from picking a new quarterback in the draft. That, frankly, is more important for the long-term future of the franchise than the entire coaching staff is.

Based on what I’ve seen of Manziel, I believe he’s still got a chance to be a decent quarterback if he applies himself, and particularly if he is able to improvise the big plays that helped him toe the line in college without ever becoming a turnover machine. I don’t know that this coaching staff will let him do anything but be a caretaker, but every throw he makes will matter a great deal to the personnel staff as they seek to evaluate him for the future.

The Browns have made plenty of mistakes over the past few years. The evaluation process could well be painful to watch, but that’s generally true of the last seven games of a Browns season. But while throwing Manziel into the fire might not pretty, it’s important. The last thing they need to do is force a draft pick at quarterback (again) because they’re not sure where they stand with Manziel.