Browns Waive Rookie LB Scooby Wright
When you draft 14 rookies, they can’t all be winners. Today, the Browns are waiving linebacker Scooby Wright, as Mike Florio of PFT tweets. The Browns hope to add Wright to the practice squad if he clears waivers, but it’s not a given that he will go unclaimed. 
Wright, a seventh-round pick, made a name for himself as a sophomore at Arizona in 2014. With 164 total tackles, 15 sacks, and 31 tackles for a loss, Wright was a national star and even finished No. 9 in Heisman voting. Unfortunately, the 22-year-old’s 2015 season did not go as well as he played only three games due to injury. Hoping to still capitalize on his ’14 success, he skipped his senior season to enter the draft. Wright and his reps were probably a bit disappointed when he went No. 250 overall. Still, with his pedigree, another team could very well claim him and put him on the 53-man roster tomorrow.
The move will create room for center Austin Reiter, who was plucked off of the Redskins’ practice squad earlier today.
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Browns Sign C Austin Reiter To Active Roster
The Browns have signed center Austin Reiter to their active roster, removing him from the Redskins’ practice squad, a source tells John Keim of ESPN.com (on Twitter). Reiter, a 2015 seventh-round pick, spent most of last season on Washington’s taxi squad. This year, he was cut loose on Sept. 13 before being re-signed to the practice squad. 
Washington’s issues at center are well-documented and they tried to patch that hole up by acquiring Bryan Stork this offseason. Now, however, the team’s plan is to use rookie guard/center Spencer Long behind starting center Kory Lichtensteiger. The Redskins liked have Reiter waiting in the wings in case of an injury, but the Browns swooped in and grabbed him.
Now, Reiter will give the Browns depth after Cameron Erving went down with a bruised lung over the weekend. There’s no word on how long the 2015 first-round pick could be sidelined, but the expectation is that he could miss a month of action.
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Browns To Sign Charlie Whitehurst
Free agent quarterback Charlie Whitehurst is joining the Browns, his agency, SportsTrust Advisors, announced Monday (Twitter link). Whitehurst will likely back up third-round rookie Cody Kessler this week for Cleveland, which is dealing with multiple injuries under center.
After losing Robert Griffin III and Josh McCown to shoulder injuries during their first two games, both losses, the Browns will start their third QB in as many weeks this Sunday against Miami. Head coach Hue Jackson revealed Monday that the team needed to find a veteran signal-caller quickly, and it has in Whitehurst. The 34-year-old possesses recent experience, having appeared in a combined five games with the Colts and Titans last season.
In total, Whitehurst has amassed 25 appearances and nine starts with four different teams. The 2006 third-round pick from Clemson has completed 55.1 percent of his 372 career attempts and tossed 10 touchdowns against seven interceptions.
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Browns Looking For Quarterback Help
With quarterback Josh McCown‘s shoulder injury set to keep him on the shelf for at least the Browns’ game against the Dolphins on Sunday, head coach Hue Jackson said Monday that Cleveland is on the hunt for signal-callers.
“Regardless what the situation will be with Josh, it’s important we get another arm on our football team as fast as we can,” he said (via Mary Kay Cabot of cleveland.com). “It’s too important. Too many things can happen this weekend.”
The only healthy quarterbacks under Browns control are two rookies: third-rounder Cody Kessler, who looks primed to make his first career start this week, and fifth-rounder Kevin Hogan. The Chiefs drafted Hogan, an ex-Stanford Cardinal, and ultimately released the 23-year-old Sept. 3, leading him to join the Browns’ practice squad.
“We’re going to get a chance to see Cody play, and we wish it wasn’t like this, but this is how it is,” said Jackson.
Kessler, formerly of USC, entered the season as the Browns’ third-stringer behind Robert Griffin III and McCown. RG3 could be out for the year after suffering a shoulder injury on opening weekend, however, which pushed McCown into action in Week 2 against the Ravens. The Browns blew a 20-0 lead en route to a 25-20 loss, one that dropped them to 0-2, though it didn’t help that McCown was playing through excruciating pain. Fortunately for McCown and the Browns, his injury is not as serious as Griffin’s, but the club will still need help at the position until the veteran is able to return.
As Cabot notes, free agent possibilities include Michael Vick, Jimmy Clausen and Jason Campbell. Jackson is fond of Campbell, per Cabot, as he coached the former Browns passer in both Oakland and Cincinnati. However, the 34-year-old was committed to retirement as of late August. And while Browns receiver Terrelle Pryor played QB at Ohio State and has NFL experience at the position, Cleveland doesn’t seem to view him as an option, according to Cabot.
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Injuries For Browns’ Nassib, Erving
This has been a rough Monday morning for the Browns. Browns defensive end Carl Nassib suffered a broken hand yesterday and will undergo surgery, according to Ian Rapoport of NFL.com (on Twitter). Meanwhile, starting center Cameron Erving suffered a bruised lung (Twitter link via Mary Kay Cabot of Cleveland.com). Meanwhile, as we learned earlier, the Browns fear that they will be without quarterback Josh McCown for quite some time. 
Nassib, a Penn State product, put himself on the NFL map in 2015 when he racked up 15.5 sacks, 46 tackles, and 19.5 tackles for a loss. Cleveland had high hopes for the defensive end after snagging him in the third round of this year’s draft, but this latest setback could keep him out for a while. Nassib suffered the injury during the second half of Browns’ 25-20 loss to the Ravens on Sunday.
There’s currently no timetable for Erving, but the expectation is that he’ll be out for at least a month. Thankfully, the center was released from the hospital earlier today. Erving was selected with the No. 19 overall pick in the 2015 draft. As a rookie, Erving appeared in all 16 regular season games with four starts.
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Browns’ McCown To Miss Significant Time?
Could the Browns lose two quarterbacks in two weeks? That’s the fear in Cleveland right now after Josh McCown hurt his left shoulder on Sunday. The team expects him to be “out awhile,” though they’ll have a better handle on his condition after he gets an MRI done today, Mary Kay Cabot of The Plain Dealer writes. 
If McCown has to miss multiple games, the Browns can be expected to look out-of-house for quarterback solutions. In theory, third-round rookie Cody Kessler is the next man up and the team is said to be happy with what they’ve seen out of him this offseason. However, despite the promise he has shown and the veteran guidance he has received from McCown, he may not be ready for live action just yet. The Browns do have rookie Kevin Hogan on the taxi squad and wide receiver Terrelle Pryor has quarterback experience, but neither one presents a better option than Kessler.
McCown, 37, went 1-7 as a starter for the Browns last season. In his one game under center for Cleveland this year, the veteran completed 20 of his 33 passes and threw two touchdowns with two interceptions. Next up for the Browns is a Sunday road contest against the Dolphins.
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Cabot: RGIII Experiment Likely Over In Cleveland
We learned earlier today that a number of veteran Browns scouts who were dismissed prior to the 2016 draft actually preferred Carson Wentz–last seen delivering a sterling debut against the Browns–to Jared Goff. Now let’s take a look at a few notes from the league’s north divisions, beginning with more on the Browns’ quarterback situation:
- It won’t come as much of a surprise, but ESPN’s Adam Schefter tweets that Browns quarterback Robert Griffin III is now expected to miss 10-12 weeks as a result of his shoulder injury, which means that his season could well be over. Even before Schefter’s report, however, it was expected that RGIII would miss the remainder of the 2016 campaign.
- Mary Kay Cabot of The Cleveland Plain Dealer believes that the Browns will draft a quarterback early in the 2017 draft and that the team will likely have whoever that quarterback is open the season as the starter. As such, Cabot thinks the RGIII experiment is over, even if the team holds an “open competition” in next year’s camp.
Veteran Browns Scouts Preferred Wentz
Only one full week of the 2016 season is in the books, but Browns fans, eminently familiar with pain and suffering, are already finding more evidence to prove that their team is cursed. Cleveland, of course, passed on the chance to draft Carson Wentz with the No. 2 overall pick in this year’s draft, instead choosing to trade the selection and to roll with Robert Griffin III and Josh McCown under center. But Wentz excelled in his professional debut against the Browns last week and RGIII found himself on IR again, so it is easy to understand the frustrations coming from the Dawg Pound.
But that may not be the worst of it. According to Jason La Canfora of CBS Sports, the Browns parted with several of their more seasoned scouts and evaluators prior to the draft–an usual time for such dismissals–and a number of those men actually preferred Wentz to Jared Goff and considered the North Dakota State product to be the more promising prospect. Of course, chief strategy officer Paul DePodesta, along with head coach Hue Jackson and OC Pep Hamilton, preferred Goff, and at the time the pro-Wentz scouts were dismissed, the club was already shopping its second-overall pick to other teams, since it became clear that the Rams were going to use the No. 1 overall pick on Goff.
It is not uncommon, of course, for there to be disagreement among a team’s talent evaluators, and the fact that some Cleveland scouts preferred Wentz would not ordinarily be newsworthy. But the fact that a pro-Wentz group that included former general managers and personnel directors was let go at such a strange time–even if they were going to be dismissed anyway during the team’s efforts to downsize later on in 2016–is only going to add fuel to the fire of the organization’s detractors.
If the Browns again find themselves near the top of the draft board in 2017, La Canfora believes they will almost have to take a quarterback, with Notre Dame’s DeShone Kizer and Clemson’s Deshaun Watson currently heading the list of signal-callers expected to be available.
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Garoppolo Had 'Big Support' Among Browns In '14
- A potential Browns–Jimmy Garoppolo union had big support from inside the franchise’s power structure in 2014 before Jimmy Haslam ordered the staff to select Johnny Manziel, Ben Volin of the Boston Globe reports. Volin, who notes the Browns studied the eventual second-round pick intensely, wonders if the new Browns’ brass would consider a Garoppolo trade after Tom Brady‘s suspension ends. The teams play in Week 5 in Cleveland, although the trade deadline doesn’t fall until November 1. A report earlier this week described third-round rookie Cody Kessler as being a ways away from being ready to contribute.
RG3 Discusses Recent Injury
Robert Griffin III took some criticism for putting himself in danger during the Browns‘ season-opener against the Eagles. On a third and 14, the speedy quarterback ran towards the sideline, where his ribs collided with Eagles cornerback Jalen Mills‘ helmet. The result? Well, if you haven’t heard, RG3 landed on the injured reserve.