Here is what Peter King from mmqb.si.com tweeted out when he visited Cleveland Browns training camp on Tuesday:
BEREA, Ohio-Cle4: P Andy Lee a great acquisition … Johnny FB doing all right things, but McCown would have to be awful for Manziel to play.
— Peter King (@SI_PeterKing) August 11, 2015
My question is why?
What makes Andy Lee such a great acquisition? Sorry, kidding.
The real question — what is the point of head coach Mike Pettine starting soon to be 11-year veteran Josh McCown at quarterback?
If the Cleveland head coach has self awareness he knows the Browns are still a year or two away from competing in a difficult AFC North where you have to navigate the Baltimore Ravens, Cincinnati Bengals and Pittsburgh Steelers.
Running out McCown for this season doesn’t bring them to those other three teams’ level. McCown is still living off his 2013 season when he completed 66.5% of his passes and threw 13 touchdowns with one interception in five games started for the Chicago Bears. Two important factors here — his wide receivers were Brandon Marshall and Alshon Jeffrey and his head coach was Marc Trestman.
Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco had completed under 60% of his passes and peaked at 22 touchdowns thrown in his three seasons before last year. In 2014 with Trestman as his offensive coordinator, he completed 62% of his passes, tossed 27 TDs and dropped his interceptions by 10.
McCown has 48 career TDs and 58 picks if you subtract that one season with the Bears. He’s completed less than 60% of his passes and averaged only 6.6 yards per attempt.
Starting 11 games for the Buccaneers last year, and yes his offensive line was brutal, but he still had two monster targets in Vincent Jackson and Mike Evans — McCown had a completion-percentage of 56.3%, tossed 11 TDs to 14 INTs. That’s horrible with those receivers. Jackson averaged the least yards per catch of his career and had his lowest receiving yardage total since 2007 (not counting 2010 when he only played five games).
All of these numbers tell us the possibility of McCown regaining the form he showed in a single season is a massive long shot.
Putting aside whatever you think of Johnny Manziel as a football player, you might be right or you might be wrong, the simple fact is he’s an unknown. What the Texas A&M product did playing in five games as a rookie and two games as a starter doesn’t paint a pretty picture, but it doesn’t mean he has no shot at being a good NFL QB. Obviously completing 51.4% of your passes with zero TDs, two picks and being sacked three times isn’t the way you want to start a career, but many rookie signal callers have started of their career’s poorly.
From all accounts Manziel has turned a corner with his preparation and how he’s attacking the game of football. Whether they’re preseason fluff pieces or this is actually true remains to be seen. Either way, with where the Browns are as a team, it makes sense for them to give the reigns to see what Manziel can do. Let him learn on the field this season making mistakes and accept his growing pains. Within the bad if you see promise it’s possible the Browns have their franchise quarterback of the future. If he’s so atrocious the organization reaches a point they decide there’s no point in investing time in him for the future you figure it out now instead of wasting time a year later doing the same thing.
Josh McCown isn’t a good reason to delay this process.
