RG3 Being Set Up for Failure with Cleveland Browns

For the Cleveland Browns and their fans, summer is the season of hope. Every year around this time, they tell themselves that this year will be different; this is the year things finally turn around.

Then fall begins, and the team makes a beeline for the AFC North basement.

This year, most of those hopes rest on the right arm of quarterback Robert Griffin III, who has hopes of his own: resurrecting his once-promising NFL career.

There's just one problem, though. Actually, there's a whole bucket full of problems. Problems that prevent this new start from being all that new. Problems that are all but certain to result in the same old outcome.

Failure—for both player and team.

At the moment, there's (allegedly) no guarantee Griffin will be the Browns' Week 1 starter. Josh McCown struggled with injuries last year, missing eight games, but when he was out there, he played pretty well. He threw three times as many touchdown passes as interceptions and posted a passer rating of 93.3.

Head coach Hue Jackson, who is likewise new to northern Ohio in 2016, told Mary Kay Cabot of Cleveland.com that he's not close to making a decision on who the starting quarterback will be:

Cabot proceeded to tell CSN Mid-Atlantic (via Jimmy Kempski of PhillyVoice.com) that she doesn't believe Jackson at all:

"

They want him to be the starting quarterback on day one. They’re not going to have a short leash on him at all.

(Browns head coach) Hugh Jackson and (offensive coordinator / QB coach) Pep Hamilton are all in on RG3. They are trying to do everything they possibly can to coax that 2012 type of season out of him again. They see those flashes of greatness, they love the skill set, the mobility, and all those kinds of things. They think they can coach him up into the kind of player who can not only scramble around and get out of the pocket and make crazy things happen like that, but also to stay within the pocket, read the defense, go through the progression. Hugh really believes in himself and what he’s been able to do with quarterbacks since he’s been in the league and he feels that he can be successful with RG3.

"

Let's be honest about a few things. First, while McCown isn't the worst quarterback the Browns could roll out there—no franchise in the last 20 years has done a better job of finding those than Cleveland—he's far from the best. Calling McCown a low-upside quarterback suggests he has some upside.

Starting him would be a commitment to mediocrity, a white flag. Aspirations of six wins in 2016—maybe.

With Griffin, it's another story. It wasn't so long ago that Griffin took the league by storm, leading the Washington Redskins to the playoffs and winning Offensive Rookie of the Year honors in 2012. At the time, he had a seemingly limitless ceiling.

Since then, that ceiling caved in on him. Griffin's spectacular rookie season ended with a torn ACL, and he never looked the same afterward. A lost step sapped his explosive mobility. With Griffin operating more as a traditional pocket quarterback, his flaws as a passer became more pronounced. He clashed publicly with head coach Jay Gruden and was labeled selfish in some circles. The next thing you knew, Kirk Cousins was starting in Washington and Griffin was on his way out of town.

However, after watching Griffin work out back in March, Jackson was sold and then some, as Jeff Darlington of NFL.com reported:

"

Jackson explained how, at one point when Griffin rolled out in a full sprint to throw a pass, "it felt like the Earth moved beneath my feet," according to team sources. He told them how Griffin's accuracy in passing drills was "freakish." It was surreal and special. It was everything you remember from 2012 -- and everything you have forgotten since.

"

Jackson's opinions about and experience with quarterbacks carries more than a little weight—as it should. He is largely credited with Andy Dalton's development in Cincinnati. And while some have forgotten, Jackson had Jason Campbell playing the best football of his career in Oakland back in 2011.

At first glance, it's a match made in heaven. A franchise desperate for a quarterback. A quarterback desperate to get his career back on track. What could go wrong?

In Cleveland? Everything.

For starters, the line Griffin will be counting on to protect him is hardly stalwart. Yes, the team has perhaps the NFL's best offensive tackle in Joe Thomas. But last year, the Browns ranked 26th in pass protection and 29th in run blocking, according to Football Outsiders. 

That was with Pro Bowl center Alex Mack and right tackle Mitchell Schwartz still in the fold. Both have since departed in free agency.

Schwartz and Mack will be replaced by Austin Pasztor and Cameron Erving, neither of whom cracked the top 60 linemen at their position last year, per Pro Football Focus. Erving received the third-worst grade among all guards league-wide.

Even if Griffin does get some modicum of time to survey the field, he'll be choosing among arguably the NFL's weakest array of passing-game targets.

Player	Pos.	Age.	Career Yards	1K Seasons
Gary Barnidge	TE	30	1,646	1
EJ Bibbs	TE	24	7	0
Corey Coleman	WR	21	0	0
Marlon Moore	WR	28	387	0
Andrew Hawkins	WR	30	2,095	0
Ricardo Louis	WR	22	0	0
Rashard Higgins	WR	21	0	0
Jordan Payton	WR	22	0	0

Between them, wide receivers Antonio Brown of the Pittsburgh Steelers and A.J. Green of the Cincinnati Bengals have a combined nine seasons with over 1,000 receiving yards. The Browns, as a team, have one—tight end Gary Barnidge in 2015.

Green, who is all of 27 years old, has more than twice as many career receiving yards than the entire Cleveland wideout corps put together. 

Per the depth chart at Ourlads, the Browns' presumptive starters at wide receiver are seventh-year journeyman Marlon Moore (who has all of 26 career catches) and 2016 first-round pick Corey Coleman (whose next NFL catch will be his first).

At least Griffin has a strong ground game to lean on. Except that he doesn't.

Last year, the Browns ranked 22nd in the NFL in rushing, averaging 95.6 yards per game. Tailbacks Isaiah Crowell and Duke Johnson have a combined zero 1,000-yard seasons on their professional resumes. Neither gained more than 3.8 yards per carry in 2015.

As if that weren't enough cause for concern, Tony Grossi of ESPN Cleveland wasn't blown away by what he's seen from Griffin in OTAs, as he told NBC Sports Radio's PFT Live (via Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk):

"

Well, if he was looking fantastic you’d be hesitant to overstate it during the OTA and minicamp season. I mean, it’s touch football and Hue Jackson constantly reminds everyone of that. But the fact is he’s been underwhelming in that environment and I don’t know if that’s a bad thing or it’s just a sign that they haven’t started playing real football yet. He is learning a new offense. First of all he is healthy, he’s very healthy. He looks physically like the old Robert Griffin in that he’s moving great, he can zing the ball pretty well, but that’s just the first step. So I guess the positive is that he looks very healthy and we’ll have to see when they go to camp July 29th is if he’s really taken advantage of the minicamp season and learned the offense because he has been underwhelming.

"

Grossi also remarked that there have been a few "look at me" moments—moments that make one wonder if the criticisms regarding Griffin's attitude in D.C. were as unfounded as the young quarterback has claimed:

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Hue Jackson had talked of [Griffin’s] humbleness and all that when he interviewed him for two days. Not only has [Griffin] thrown the ball over the fence, on a number of occasions he’s done the slide, he’s done the stand-up slide and jumped up and shouted, ‘Who says I can’t slide?’ and stuff like that. You know, if you’re on the team and you’re the coaching staff who’s aware of his background, you’re cringing at that because you don’t want to see that. You don’t see [Tom] Brady and [Peyton] Manning and the great ones doing those little ‘look at me’ moments. Maybe he’s just having fun in the drudgery of minicamp, but it’s something to watch as training camp begins later in July.

"

Terry Pluto of the Plain Dealer went one further than Grossi, writing that McCown has clearly outplayed Griffin during the offseason: "It's just my opinion, but in the few practices that I watched, McCown was the best quarterback on the field. He can still play. McCown had a 1-7 record as a starter last season, but not all of that was his fault."

No one is suggesting McCown should start. The Browns know where the franchise will go if he's under center: nowhere.

Nor is this meant as criticism of Griffin. Or Jackson, for that matter. They're new in town. They didn't dig the cavernous chasm the Browns are mired in, just as the new front office didn't make the scores of bad personnel decisions that have left the Browns as the most talent-bereft team in the NFL.

All are doing and will do the best they can with the hand they've been dealt.

But it's a bad hand. The cold, hard truth is this: Griffin is an oft-injured quarterback who hasn't had any tangible success since his rookie season playing behind a shaky line with next to no receiving options to throw to and an underwhelming ground game to fall back on.

Even if Griffin can recapture some semblance of past form and Jackson is as good an offensive mind as the Browns hoped when they hired him, the odds are stacked heavily against things turning out any differently.

Which is to say...not well.

Gary Davenport is an NFL analyst at Bleacher Report and a member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association and Pro Football Writers of America. You can follow Gary on Twitter @IDPSharks.