The Cleveland Browns got a better quarterback in the sixth round than who the Los Angeles Rams drafted with the 13th overall pick, according to a veteran reporter at ESPN. Should the Rams have waited to draft a quarterback or is this just Shedeur Sanders 2.0?
ESPN Cleveland’s Tony Grossi said on the radio this week that he’d rather have sixth round pick Taylen Green than Ty Simpson. “This guy’s got traits,” said Grossi, who has been working for ESPN since 2012, “Athletic ability. I’d rather have (Green) than (Garrett Nussmeier), Ty Simpson, or Carson Beck.”
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One of the other hosts on 850 ESPN Cleveland said, “I totally agree” to every quarterback listed.
Green was the 182nd overall pick after a career at Boise State and Arkansas. He completed 60% of his passes last season with 19 touchdowns, 11 interceptions, and 777 rushing yards with eight more touchdowns.
NFL.com gave him a “99 athletic score”, whatever that means.
Although his athletic testing was off the charts, Lance Zierlein says that Green “puts the ball in harm’s way at an alarming rate” and that he struggles with “processing”, “timing”, and “post-snap recognition”. There are reasons that every team, including the Browns, bypassed Green in the draft many times over the first 181 picks.
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This does not mean that Ty Simpson will prove to be a great pick or that Green could not get better and eventually start in the NFL.
It is, however, so on brand for Cleveland Browns fans to think the bar is so low on the team that Taylen Green feels somehow exciting compared to every other option that could have been available. This is after all the same fanbase that thinks Shedeur Sanders should be handed the starting job from day one despite being a fifth round pick who was by some accounts the worst quarterback in the NFL last season.
Grossi compares Green to Malik Willis and says that it could take him a few years before he contributes as a quarterback. Why do you think he chose Willis instead of, I don’t know, 300 other examples he could have used of drafted quarterbacks who did carve out NFL careers?
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Because Willis was not a first round pick (but as a 3rd rounder, was drafted three rounds earlier than Green)
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Willis is also a quarterback who tested well as an athlete
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Willis was not an accurate passer coming into the league, and as far as we know still is not an accurate passer; Willis started one game last season
It is easy to pick a QB du jour who “feels” like a good pick and say, “Hey, let’s compare our guy to that guy” because what else was Grossi going to do? “You know who he is? Stetson Bennett.”
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No, he’s probably not going to mention that there are many more quarterbacks, like Bennett, who were drafted on day three and that was the pinnacle of their pro careers.
I don’t know if Grossi was saying that he’d rather have Green in the 6th than Simpson in the 1st—if the Browns wanted Ty Simpson, they would have had to pick him at 9th overall after they traded down—but the message is pretty strong here that he feels like Cleveland did better at quarterback in the draft than the Los Angeles Rams did.
Which feels like a very Browns thing to do despite that other franchise being…the Browns.
