You have a house.
The inside of this house has sustained serious damage. It could be fire, water, smoke, sewage, whatever. The point being that it’s serious enough that ServPro’s rolling up seven deep to assist.
In that moment, one’s not thinking about how many televisions they’re going to put in their man cave or the color they’re going to paint the family room. They’re just hoping to get the house to be inhabitable again.
That house is the Browns’ quarterback room. Tuesday was the third anniversary of the disaster that struck the room, when they acquired Deshaun Watson — then paid him a fully guaranteed five-year, $230 million contract — from the Houston Texans, only to get 19 starts over the three years out of the former Pro Bowl quarterback.
This offseason is akin to ServPro showing up to try to make it inhabitable again. There’s the question of just how much work is necessary to get to that point, let alone where the thought of fancy interior decoration can be broached.
The first part of the reclamation project happened last week when Dorian Thompson-Robinson, the only healthy holdover of the Browns’ quarterback room, was traded to the Philadelphia Eagles for a new piece. Kenny Pickett, though, is like a two-by-four that’ll end up a part of a window frame.
Sure, it’s important, even necessary. But you’ll need a lot more to finish out the structure.
Pickett is just that — a former first-round draft pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers who has had some mild success in a little more than two dozen career starts. He’s won more starts than he’s lost, but that’s about the extent of the platitudes one could accurately use to describe his first three seasons in the NFL.
It’s still a start. It’s all about where the Browns go next to build upon that one piece.
Russell Wilson, another former Steelers quarterback, was in Berea last Thursday for a visit. The Browns pulled out all of the stops, including having Myles Garrett, their newly minted highest-paid edge rusher in NFL history, offer to not “take him to the ground three or four times a year” if he signed with Cleveland.
Wilson needed a deal in order to sign with the Browns, which didn’t happen last Thursday. It didn’t happen for him Friday while he was in New York to meet with the Giants, either.
When will it happen? That’s a question only Wilson probably can answer.
There’s another question Wilson could answer for the Browns, at least for upcoming season. He could also be the answer to the question of what quarterback still available could stabilize the team’s starting situation until something more long-term arrives on the scene.
That long-term answer could be in this April’s draft. It wouldn’t necessarily have to be Shedeur Sanders (or Cam Ward) at the top of the first round, but there’s no doubt a quarterback is being selected before the Browns are done picking.
That long-term answer, though, may not be the short-term solution to get the quarterback room back in order. Even in a world where rookies are having success quicker that normal in the right situations, the Browns aren’t necessarily in that situation.
Which goes back to Wilson, who helped Pittsburgh get to the playoffs last season. He’s not the version of himself who won one Super Bowl and was a terrible play call leading to an ill-timed interception from winning a second while with the Seattle Seahawks, but he’s still playing at a level that few Browns quarterbacks have reached over the last 25 years.
In other words, Wilson could help provide some support to the structure of the quarterback room, at least until it’s finally rid of the lingering effects of the disaster that was foisted upon it three years ago.
Maybe by that point the Browns can start thinking about how they want to decorate their new quarterback room.