Is Cleveland Browns safety J.T. Hassell a spy?

With a mobile quarterback set to face the Cleveland Browns in Week 15, they could turn to J.T. Hassell as the spy

Right here, right now, Dawg Pound Daily is starting the rumor that Cleveland Browns rookie J.T. Hassell is a spy. But you don’t have to worry, he’s not working for Bill Belichick to obtain films of the Browns practices, nor is he working for an evil foreign dictatorship.

He’s just a perfect candidate to be one of the players who will be the “spy” in a defense designed to stop a mobile quarterback. That is, he could get snaps versus the Arizona Cardinals, and his assignment would be to follow rookie quarterback Kyler Murray wherever he goes until he is either down or no longer has the ball.

Murray can change direction as fast or faster than anyone else in the NFL and he has a ridiculously strong arm. He’s leading Arizona in rushing yards with 448 while also passing for 3,060 yards, 16 touchdowns versus nine interceptions, and a passer rating of 86.9.

But he has also been sacked 46 times, which says that he can be caught. Like many young rookies, he likes to scramble to buy time when his receivers are covered, and the Browns need to make him pay when he does.

Hassell is perfect for the spy position because first of all, he is in the same class as Murray as an athlete. He proved that at his Pro Day workout when he turned in a forty-yard dash in 4.38, which makes him probably the second-fastest Brown behind  Denzel Ward at 4.32.

Whoever heard of a guy with that kind of speed who can bench press more than Joe Schobert (23 to 22 reps of 225 pounds) and has the best vertical leap (42 inches) on the team?

Hassell was a linebacker at Florida Tech, where he was a Division II first-team All-American and destroyed the Gulf South Conference, leading in tackles (124), tackles per game (10.3), solo tackles (76) and forced fumbles (3).

However at 5-foot-11 and 200 pounds, he’s too small to be a conventional linebacker, and so the Browns have switched him to strong safety. It would be remiss not to mention that NFL teams were turned off by him because he does not have a fully formed left hand. That may be a disadvantage in some situations, but on the other hand, you can’t earn a living making hand tackles in the NFL, and especially if you can not catch the other guy.

It says here that there is much, much more that he can do than he cannot do.

His linebacker skills are well suited to search and destroy a speedy quarterback. He will be assigned to pursue Murray and cut off his running lanes. For this role, his lack of experience may not be that big of a handicap because the spy position is only used a few times a year, against quarterbacks that are hyper-mobile like Murray or Lamar Jackson of Baltimore.

That will force the Browns to play man-to-man in the defensive secondary.

He will not be the spy all the time of course. In some plays, it might be one of the other safeties or even a linebacker in order to keep the offensive line guessing about who they need to account for.

In case you are wondering, in a short time Hassell has been a major contributor on special teams. He also got in 14 snaps on defense against Pittsburgh as a conventional strong safety and was credited with three tackles.

So it seems reasonable to your humble correspondent that Hassell will get snaps on Sunday in order to contain the special threat of Kyler Murray.

If that proves to be correct, the Browns will face the purple birds and Lamar Jackson after that, and it does not get any easier.