Four Cleveland Browns who could emerge from Freddie’s dog house

Tight end David Njoku

David Njoku is the reigning king of the Kitchens dog house. The former first-round draft pick managed to become the fifth string tight end. This feat may never have been accomplished before because teams hardly ever carry five tight ends. Njoku has a healthy scratch the last two games, thus cementing his status as fifth string.

Njoku broke his wrist earlier in the season but, like Drew Forbes, was able to come back onto the active roster because of a special rule for players on the Injured Reserve (IR). Kitchens cared not a whit about that.

Since becoming eligible to come off injured reserve Week 11, Njoku was thrown to only three times and had one catch for four yards against Cincinnati. Njoku was also involved in a weird play when he appeared to catch a pass, and then while he was on his back, the ball was stripped by linebacker Nick Vigil.

How can you fumble when you are on your back? The call was then changed to an interception, in which case we are left with the question — why the ball was not dead with the receiver on his back? This fan never did understand that call. Nevertheless, the scuttlebutt is that Freddie Kitchens blamed Njoku for not hanging onto the ball. Hence Njoku was sent to the dog house post-haste.

Njoku had 613 receiving yards in 2018 and was on the field for 79.8 percent of the total offensive snaps. He was never considered a perfect player and in particular has not earned a particularly good reputation as a blocker either against the pass rush or for the run.

While agreeing that Njoku isn’t quite playing his way into Canton, he’s an intelligent, motivated player, and the Browns are not so good that they can just send 639 receiving yards to the dog house. But they did.

The four tight ends ahead of Njoku, namely Ricky Seals-Jones, Demetrius Harris, Pharaoh Brown and Stephen Carlson, combined for all of 456 yards between the four of them. Maybe the 639 yards from Njoku in 2018 were not so bad after all.

Some time back, this writer had the temerity to suggest that Njoku should be converted to an extra wide receiver and was duly chastised for that suggestion. But the 2018 Njoku hung onto the ball when it was thrown to him (63.6 pct catch percentage).

The Browns cannot be content getting only 200 receiving yards from their third-best wide receiver (Damion Ratley). If Ratley doesn’t step up, Njoku should at least be able to contribute more than that based on his athleticism, height and reach mismatch against a typical defensive back.

So there you have it, four Browns who might make it back to the team’s good graces after wandering last year.

To this list we could add others who were already summarily executed, such as troubled wide receiver Antonio Callaway whose alleged affinity for pot got him into trouble. However, Callaway has already been released so there is no opportunity for him to redeem himself in Cleveland.