Cleveland Browns: Will the real Jamie Collins please stand up

IJamie Collins has been the Cleveland Browns most inconsistent player this season. We take a look at the outside linebacker and the possible reasons for his decline in play.

Cleveland Browns outside linebacker Jamie Collins is consistently inconsistent. From game to game it is impossible to predict how Collins will perform. His performance against the Carolina Panthers was a microcosm of his career in Cleveland. He looked good at times, and he looked lost at times. How did he get here?

Collins was brought to the Cleveland Browns by Sashi Brown and company back in the mid-season of 2016. He was brought in to be a difference maker for the Browns defense. With his skill set, there was no reason to believe that it would not work.

Collins’ size, athleticism, and instincts made him stick out. The one knock on Collins when he played with the New England Patriots was that he freelanced too much. Even if you make plays for Bill Belichick, if you do not do it his way, he has no use for you. The Browns, on the other hand, were so starved for playmakers that they were more than willing to take that trade-off.

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The move paid off immediately. Collins played in eight games in 2016 and racked up 69 total tackles with two sacks and a forced fumble. Naturally, the Browns locked him up and gave him a lucrative contract. He signed a four-year deal for $50 million. Then poof — that version of Jaime Collins magically disappeared.

The incarnation of Collins that took his place seemed unmotivated and disinterested. What could be the cause? Why the sudden drop off?

All too often the Browns have rewarded free agents with large contracts just to watch the recipient mail it in cough — Dwayne Bowe — cough. Is that what happened in the curious case of Jaime Collins?

It is entirely possible that he never recovered from a torn MCL that he suffered in November of 2017. He is just outside of one year from his surgery, and it’s likely that he doesn’t fully trust his knee yet. Maybe he never fully recovers from it. This is the first major injury of his career and it’s impossible to know how that affected his psyche. Only time will tell.

Then we come to the reason that no professional athlete wants to hear, maybe he has lost a step. Perhaps the athleticism that Collins relied on for years is not what it once was. His ability was predicated on instinct more than it was technique. In recent weeks he has looked stiff and hasn’t shown the ability to change directions to track ball carriers. At only 29 years old, for his sake, you would think that would not be the case.

The most realistic explanation for the drop in Collins production is the emergence of the linebackers around him. Christian Kirksey came on strong in 2016 and played well in 2017. Joe Schobert led the league in tackles in 2017 and is now the unquestioned quarterback of the defense. In theory, their emergence should have led to Collins making bigger splash plays, since he no longer has to do all the heavy lifting.

All things considered, Collins play has been inconsistent at best. There are games that he virtually becomes nonexistent, and there are games when he is a tenacious stat filler. Each week, there’s no telling if you are going to get good Jamie Collins or bad Jamie Collins. It’s hard to count on that type of player no matter how talented they may be.

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These final three games will go a long way towards showing John Dorsey and the Browns that he wants to be part of the plan. With the amount of money Collins is due he needs to prove his worth right now. But in order to do that the real Jamie Collins will need to stand up.

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