Time to accept that Josh Gordon is not coming back
By Thomas Moore
Cleveland Browns fans are still holding out hope that Josh Gordon is coming back. The reality is that his time with the club is clearly over.
It is unknown who first said “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” but it is a sentiment that many Cleveland Browns can relate to when it comes to wide receiver Josh Gordon.
It doesn’t take much for Gordon to get fans swooning over the thought of him once again wearing the Orange and Brown, even a simple Tweet can do it:
https://twitter.com/JOSH_GORDONXII/status/830525996432519168
The problem, of course, is that Tweeting is just all that Gordon can currently do as he remains on the NFL’s suspended list after repeatedly running afoul of the league’s substance abuse policies.
Browns fans have been down this road before with Gordon, starting with the 2013 season when he was suspended for the first two games. He followed that up by being suspended for the first 11 games of the 2014 season and then the entirety of the 2015 season.
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Gordon was conditionally reinstated by the NFL last summer and was scheduled to return after a four-game suspension to start the season. But that never happened as he entered a rehab facility and has remained on the suspended list ever since.
All told, Gordon has only played in 19 of Cleveland’s last 64 games due to suspensions.
Once it became clear last fall that Gordon was not returning, head coach Hue Jackson made it clear that the Browns are done with Gordon.
Related: Josh Gordon out of rehab, so what comes next?
“What’s best for our football team is that we move forward and move on,” Jackson said at the time. “He’s not going to be with us and we wish him well, but we’re moving forward. We’re going to move on. Obviously Josh is not here and doing what he thinks he needs to for his life which we support 100 percent and after today, today is really the last Josh Gordon comment I want to make about that.”
Yet there are still fans holding out hope that this time, if the NFL reinstates him, that Gordon will actually stay on the field and be a “top 5” receiver in the league.
But the reality is that, save for that 14-game stretch in 2013, Gordon has done nothing on or off the field to earn such loyalty from Browns fans. If by some miracle Gordon were to be reinstated, make it through training camp, and line up for the Browns at wide receiver in Week 1, it will have been 33 months since he last appeared in an NFL game that mattered.
One of the biggest assets that a player can provide a team is reliability, and by any standard imaginable Gordon has failed in that department.
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The Browns are moving forward with their latest rebuilding efforts and need to focus on developing the players that are in the building and that can be counted on to remain in the building.
As for the fans, they should heed the words of coach Norman Dale:
“I would hope you support who we are, not who we are not.”