INDIANAPOLIS: The long, winding road the Browns have traveled for decades in search of a franchise quarterback could lead them to drafting a player at the sport’s most important position April 27.
So the Browns, loaded with 11 picks in the draft, including the first and 12th overall selections, are doing their homework this week at the NFL Scouting Combine in an effort to determine whether North Carolina’s Mitch Trubisky, Notre Dame’s DeShone Kizer, Clemson’s Deshaun Watson or Texas Tech’s Patrick Mahomes should become their future.
Those are the top-rated quarterbacks in this year’s class, and Browns coach Hue Jackson revealed Thursday the team will have interviewed all of them by the time it leaves the combine. Jackson also said he anticipates being hands on with the quarterbacks at their pro days. The Browns are also expected to conduct private workouts with them and host them during visits to team headquarters in the buildup to the draft.
“No one’s really claimed this position yet on our football team,” Jackson said at the Indiana Convention Center. “So we need to do everything we can to continue to add a player that we feel, as an organization, really good about.”
Jackson reiterated he’s seeking a quarterback with impressive arm talent and processing speed and the ability to lead as the face of the franchise.
“Those are three very fundamental things that I think will show itself from a college quarterback,” Jackson said.
And the combine will allow Jackson to develop a better feel for how the headliners of the quarterback class fit the criteria. Jackson said the coaches and player personnel department have worked collaboratively to rank those players, but the order of preference hasn’t been finalized.
Several factors are being considered while studying each quarterback.
Trubisky
In Jackson’s mind, the redshirt junior literally measures up. Despite speculation Trubisky would prove to be 6-foot-1 at the combine instead of 6-2, he measured 6-2⅛ and 222 pounds with 9½-inch hands.
“I think that’s great. It’s good that he’s over 6-2,” Jackson said. “We all have a profile for what we like a quarterback to be, and I think you kind of work through that. I like a guy that’s a little taller.”
Jackson explained 6-2 is his threshold for ideal quarterback height.
“I think a guy has to be about 6-2 to play in this league,” Jackson said. “The special guys, I don’t want to take anything away from any of the other quarterbacks, there have been guys who have played in this league who are not 6-2, but the majority of the guys who have played are 6-2 or a little bit better, and that’s just what I like in a quarterback.”
With his size clarified, the biggest knock on Trubisky is he only started 13 games in college.
“It is a small sample size,” Jackson said. “ ... But I don’t get concerned about that part of it as long as a guy can do what we need him to do.”
Another potential issue with Trubisky is the immense pressure the Mentor native could feel if he were relied on to become the savior of his hometown Browns.
“All those things are important because you have to understand some guys play better when they are at home, some guys don’t,” Jackson said. “We would have to know all those things, and we’ll do the digging on all these guys that way, to find out can they really matriculate to the National Football League and still play at a high level and understand the demands of playing the position, especially for the Cleveland Browns.”
Kizer
The redshirt sophomore has prototypical size — 6-4¼ and 233 pounds with 9⅞-inch hands. It’s as if he was built for the AFC North.
“That’s a big guy,” Jackson said.
But Notre Dame went 4-8 this past season, and Jackson said in 2016 it’s the quarterback’s job to lift his team to victory no matter what.
“We’ll definitely dig into that and understand why [Notre Dame went 4-8],” Jackson said. “I try to just look at the player, what he’s able to do, where he is. Those things are also things that you’ve got to know and understand about the player because he’s very talented, and you’d like to know why that happened.”
Inaccurate passing also plagued Kizer at times.
“I think you can improve a lot of skills over time,” Jackson said. “I think you create the environment and repetition for a player to continue to do those things and do them well, but obviously, sometimes guys just have that. We’d rather have a guy that has it all and then we just continue to improve it and make it better. Obviously, throwing the ball and throwing the ball accurately is very important in the National Football League.”
Watson and Mahomes
Watson, a junior, went 28-2 the past two seasons and conquered Alabama with an MVP performance in the College Football Playoff championship game.
“That’s important,” Jackson said. “He’s obviously had a great college career, won a national championship, competed at a high level. Very talented player.”
But some analysts question whether Watson, 6-2½ and 221 pounds with 9¾-inch hands, can win the from the pocket in the NFL coming out of Clemson’s spread offense as a dual-threat quarterback.
Watson, Trubisky, Kizer and Mahomes operated almost exclusively out of the shotgun in college.
Mahomes, 6-2 and 225 pounds with 9¼-inch hands, ran an air raid offense at Texas Tech.
“So many of the [college] teams are playing the spread offense,” Jackson said, “and you have to develop a way to evaluate that position with those guys doing something that’s totally different than some of the NFL teams do.”
The learning curve can be steep, and Jackson said it’s too soon to know whether any of the quarterbacks in the draft would be ready to start right away in the NFL.
“That’s why we’re here, to spend more time with them to and see what they know and what they don’t know and how we can help them and how they would fit in our system,” Jackson said. “We’ll know more about all these guys as we continue to move forward.”
Nate Ulrich can be reached at nulrich@thebeaconjournal.com. Read the Browns blog at www.ohio.com/browns. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/NateUlrichABJ and on Facebook www.facebook.com/abj.sports.