Browns should take a hard pass on quarterback Teddy Bridgewater
By Thomas Moore
The Cleveland Browns once again find themselves in the market for a quarterback, but there is no reason the team should take a chance on Teddy Bridgewater.
The Cleveland Browns need a quarterback.
The Minnesota Vikings have so many quarterbacks they don’t know what to do.
But while it would make sense on some level for the Browns to at least consider Vikings quarterback Case Keenum when free agency opens on March 14, the last thing that general manager John Dorsey needs to consider is signing quarterback Teddy Bridgewater.
On Tuesday, Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network reported that the Vikings are planning to allow Bridgewater to become a free agent rather than get into a dispute over the details of his current contract. While no official decision has been made, everyone involved expects Bridgewater to be free to test the market come next month.
With the March looming and some murkiness around #Vikings QB Teddy Bridgewater’s contract, he is expected to be a free agent, sources say. Minnesota is not planning to assert that his contract tolls and Bridgewater is proceeding as if he’s a free agent.
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) February 27, 2018
The Vikings selected Bridgewater in the first round of the 2014 NFL Draft. Prior to that year’s draft, then Browns team president Joe Banner commissioned his infamous $100,000 quarterback study that reportedly said that Bridgewater was the best quarterback in the draft.
The Browns, of course, selected quarterback Johnny Manziel, bypassing not only Bridgewater but the actual best quarterback in that draft class in Derek Carr, who went to the Oakland Raiders.
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Bridgewater made 12 starts his rookie year and then helped lead the Vikings to the playoffs in 2015 with an 11-5 record. But a major knee injury in training camp sidelined him for the entire 2016 season and he only appeared in one game in 2017, throwing just two passes, as Keenum led the Vikings to the NFC Championship Game.
In the two years that he did play Bridgewater was a decent enough quarterback, completing 64.7 of his passes with 28 touchdowns, but also throwing 22 interceptions.
The Vikings are reportedly one of the teams, along with the Browns, New York Jets, Denver Broncos and Arizona Cardinals, who are expected to make a pitch to free agent quarterback Kirk Cousins, so it makes some sense that they would be cleaning out the quarterback room.
But the Vikings need a backup plan if they miss out on Cousins, and the fact that they seem ready to move on from their former first-round selection should give Dorsey pause. If the Vikings, who know what Bridgewater brings to the field better than anyone else, are willing to let him leave then there must be something they don’t like about his recovery from his knee injury.
The Browns are most likely going to fix the quarterback situation in the draft rather than sign Cousins, which means they will need a reliable veteran quarterback to keep things together until the rookie is ready to go.
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Relying on a quarterback who hasn’t played in two years, and may not be able to hold up if he does return to the field, is simply not the way to go.