General Browns and NFL discussion

Ryan

You must have the email addresses of all the forum registered members. How about sending an email blast inviting them to our new forums.

Browns trade for Elijah Moore: What it means and why Cleveland felt it had to make the move

1245718774
By Zac Jackson
Mar 23, 2023
33

Save Article
Some thoughts on the acquisition of Elijah Moore, the overall state of the Browns’ receiving corps and why the Browns thought they had to make this move right now…

• It’s the speed. The Browns needed more. The Browns needed Moore (please don’t log off and hate me; it had to be done). For reasons of salary cap, roster need and market availability, the Browns first spent big on defense. They went 10 days into the player movement period without adding a wide receiver, and their options were dwindling. They were desperate, but that doesn’t have to have a negative connotation here. The Jets viewed Moore as expendable just two years after picking him in the second round at No. 34 overall; the Browns saw a player whose skill set fit their search criteria and who could not only be attained for a reasonable price but is just turning 23 and is under his team-friendly rookie contract for two more seasons. There were multiple reasons the Browns saw this as their best fit.

ADVERTISEMENT


• Moore’s production has been inconsistent, but he did average 12.5 yards per reception last season. He requested a trade last year because he didn’t feel like he was getting enough opportunities. He had a big rookie season and led a bad Jets offense in receiving despite missing five games. Last year, he had some big games — and some long stretches when he wasn’t involved. The Browns see a player who has that extra gear they need and was caught up in a revolving door of mediocre quarterbacks. When the Browns reconvene this spring, their offense isn’t starting from scratch with Deshaun Watson — but it also isn’t far from that. They think Moore can build chemistry with Watson and eventually use that and his speed to consistently get behind opposing defenses.

go-deeper
GO DEEPER

Jets trade WR Elijah Moore to Browns

• The Browns with Amari Cooper, Donovan Peoples-Jones, tight end David Njoku and Moore atop their pass-catching group have a better group than they did without Moore. They’ll still add to that group in the draft but don’t need to reach or be forced into selecting a wide receiver. Andrew Berry was always going to trade out of the Browns’ pick at No. 42; he just did it five weeks ahead of schedule, acquiring Moore and pick No. 74 for pick No. 42. Now, the Browns aren’t far from where they picked cornerback Martin Emerson Jr. at No. 68 last year, will still have trade options and can finalize their draft board with clarity at most spots on the current roster.

• Per Pro Football Focus, Moore played 341 snaps in the slot and 385 as an outside wide receiver last season. The Browns can also move Cooper and Njoku around the formation to create favorable matchups and keep defenses guessing. The Browns aren’t going to be a three- and four-wide offense all the time, but they needed more downfield threats — and they were always looking for more explosion and quickness so that when Watson escapes the pocket, receivers can break off their original routes and force defenses to chase both the quarterback and his targets.

• Another PFF stat on Moore — and an important one: He’s had just two drops on 133 professional targets (1.5%). As a team, the Browns ranked 29th in drop rate over the past two seasons (5.5%).

ADVERTISEMENT


• For some reason, the internet seemed to take off with the idea that the Browns were going to get Jerry Jeudy from the Broncos. But the Broncos were never going to part with Jeudy for anything less than a first-round pick, and the Browns don’t have one of those until 2025. Jeudy is a really good player who had a strong finish to 2022, and though the Broncos are facing some crucial financial decisions soon, they never had a reason to just give Jeudy away. There are a few lessons here: One is that the salary cap is real. The second is that almost everybody is looking for receivers with top-level speed and explosion, which is why the Browns were getting more desperate by the hour. The third is that you should choose your Twitter insiders wisely.

• Of course, the Browns wanted Jeudy; he’s lightning-fast and really good! But the reality was that the Browns’ cap situation, dearth of quality picks over the next two seasons and lack of strong options at No. 42 in this year’s draft always made Moore the much more realistic fit. The Jets chose former Chiefs receiver Mecole Hardman over Moore and completed a one-year deal for Hardman on Wednesday afternoon. The Jets, seemingly, saw adding another second-round pick as a good bridge to finally getting their Aaron Rodgers trade done. The Browns saw their options dwindling and saw the fit with the Jets as far as price and need, and the end result was a trade that made sense for both sides.

• The Browns just weren’t going to get their future No. 1 wide receiver at No. 42. They knew that and acted accordingly. The Browns aren’t done adding pass-rushers or wide receivers, but they’re a win-now team and decided to take on Moore at salary-cap numbers of $1.47 million for 2023 and $1.88 million for 2024. They can still move up or down in the draft, and there will be more movement. The Browns now have two picks in each of the third, fourth and fifth rounds. They only have four total picks in 2024.

go-deeper
GO DEEPER

Browns free-agency tracker: WR Elijah Moore acquired from Jets via trade

• For now, wide receiver names to know in the third round are Oklahoma’s Marvin Mims and Cincinnati’s Tyler Scott. We’ll get more into them — and deeper into a full draft target list — soon. Both soon and later, actually.

• Cooper, who turns 29 in June, is carrying cap hits of $23.8 million in each of the next two years. The Browns still rightly view him as their No. 1 receiver and believe that Moore can help Cooper see fewer double teams. The Moore addition is not an indictment of Peoples-Jones, who’s entering the final year of his rookie deal. Peoples-Jones had a big season, and every offense needs a big target who can make contested catches. Peoples-Jones having another big season in his contract year would only be good for the Browns, and adding Moore (plus, presumably, a speedy rookie) can help the Browns keep all their receivers fresher and eventually help them find more defined roles. The Browns want to be more of an open offense and still think Peoples-Jones can be a part of that.

ADVERTISEMENT


• Last year, it was too often just a two-man receiving corps. Njoku had some big moments, and other players made occasional contributions, but the bulk of the big-down targets went to Cooper and Peoples-Jones. Now, the Browns have another real threat atop the group in Moore — a bit of a log jam of mostly unproven players behind that group. David Bell is going to continue to get chances to earn a role. It’s hard to tell how many more chances Anthony Schwartz or Jakeem Grant will get, but we’ll see. The Browns think 2022 sixth-round pick Michael Woods and late-season waiver claim Jaelon Darden each have a chance to continue to develop, too, but they had to add experience and playmaking. Had to. And given Cooper’s age and Peoples-Jones only under being under contract for one more season, they aren’t done. The Browns are only getting back to the playoffs if Watson has a great year, and giving Watson more playmakers is the best thing the team can do to help.

Looks like they picked up Willis' 5th year option.

Bernie Kosar opens up about brain trauma, his fears, his coma, his recovery – Terry Pluto
Updated: May. 15, 2023, 6:01 a.m.|Published: May. 15, 2023, 5:33 a.m.
BERNIE KOSAR TODAY
Dealing with CTE with a healthy diet helped Bernie Kosar lose more than 100 pounds. Photo By Jim McCarthy / Special to Cleveland.com

facebook
twitter


612
shares
By Terry Pluto, cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio – You’re Bernie Kosar, and you want to tell the truth.

You want people to know that you’re more than a former Browns quarterback who has had concussion and other health problems.


You want people to know what it’s like for you and many others who have suffered from Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE).

It’s not for them to feel sorry for you.

It’s not about all the concussions you suffered in football. How many? Fifty? Seventy-five? One doctor said your brain scan looked like you must have had 100. On PET scans, your brain looked like a blue punching bag. The right frontal lobe was deemed “dead” by one doctor.


And the surgeries …how many? Twenty-five? Thirty? Perhaps forty. Shoulders. Knees. Fingers. The back. The elbow. It seems like it never ends.

It’s not just you. It’s so many who have played football at almost any level, and the physical price that has been paid.

COMING TO CLEVELAND
Bernie Kosar wears his new Browns jersey at the July 2, 1985, press conference.Cleveland Plain Dealer


WHAT WE SHOULD KNOW

You want fans to understand what it’s like to live with CTE, because so many people dealing with it don’t want to talk about it. It’s not just football players. Many people have had major head and brain injuries.

Many of them prefer to keep it in the dark.

Why?

You know why … embarrassment.

Even now, you are reluctant to talk about it. But you’re 59. You feel you’re in the fourth quarter of your life. You think God has one last game for you to play …

The game of truth.

Sometimes, people saw you and you were in bad shape. You were barely coherent. It seemed you hadn’t slept for a week.


That was almost true.

There were periods where you went 48 … 64 … and once 96 hours and couldn’t sleep. Your brain wouldn’t shut off. The pain, the pounding, the squeezing of the skull was ceaseless. The drugs you took to sleep didn’t help.

Not just you, but many of your “brothers,” as you call your CTE family, have endured the same thing. You feel like your life has been sabotaged by things going on inside your head.

The doctors tell you to sleep …that deep REM sleep is important to healing.

But you can’t.

Nor can you explain the frustration that you feel.

FLATTENED
Bernie Kosar is sacked and practically buried in 1989.Cleveland Plain Dealer


WHERE AM I?

You think about the times you were driving, especially on I-480. Driven that way hundreds of times …

But suddenly, nothing looked familiar. You think, “Where am I?”

Then your heart starts to race. There is a cold sweat.

Fear.

As a quarterback with the Browns – the last time the Browns were consistently good, back in the late 1980s – you were known for your brains. You could break down defenses. You could almost see things before they happened.

At Miami, you graduated in three years with a degree in finance. Sometimes during those nights when you couldn’t sleep, you would go through long math problems and algorithms in your head.


But suddenly, you can’t remember where you’re driving? You know you are in familiar territory, but you don’t recognize anything?

You wonder, “What’s happening to me?”

Now, you have learned to pull off the road. You take deep breaths. You pray. You remind yourself, “It’s a short-term memory problem … just wait … be calm … it will pass … you’ve had them before.”

It usually does.

TAKING A BEATING
Bernie Kosar was sacked 273 times in his NFL career.Cleveland Plain Dealer


THE SEIZURES, THE COMA

Between 2014-18, you had several seizures. One happened at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, and you went into a coma. It lasted for 96 hours. All you remember is going down in the airport, waking up in a Chicago hospital.

There were other seizures. Most of them happened at airports and on flights. The noise, the change of air pressure and the anxiety. You had at least one other experience with a coma.

At this point in your life, you were fighting depression. You felt like a walking Goodyear Blimp, weighing more than 320 pounds.

Doctors prescribed so many pills ...

Pills for pain ...

Pills for high blood pressure ...


Pills for inflammation and other ailments ...

It seemed you were taking 20-30 a day.

Back in the 1990s, doctors were writing lots of prescriptions for pain pills such as Vicodin, Percocet and Adderall – all for players and others dealing with pain. Later, it was Oxycodone. At the time, no one fully understood the addictive nature and damaging impact these drugs would have on so many people – not just athletes.

Several years ago, you had trouble saying multisyllabic words. You couldn’t convey some basic ideas in a conversation. There were times when your speech was slurred, people thinking you were drunk.

You felt lost, stupid and yes … embarrassed.

That word … embarrassed ... it keeps coming up. Not just for you, but for others suffering from CTE.


When you played, no one came out of the game “for a ding in the head.” If you left a game for a “little” head injury, you were embarrassed. You should be tougher than that!

One trainer had a special concussion test. The players knew he’d hold up fingers and ask, “How many do you see?”

The answer would always be two fingers, even if you saw 20. No one fully understood the damage being done.

COME INTO THE LIGHT

You’re angry about the NFL’s concussion settlement and how it becomes so difficult for former players to receive the medical and financial help they need. In your own case, you went to three different doctors in three different cities to be examined.

Your sense and that of many of your friends is the doctors were looking for reasons not to grant the aid needed. The NFL has been sued for using a “lower baseline” for African American players when determining brain damage. In 2021, the league agreed to end “race-based testing” to determine the degree of brain damage.


After that scary coma in 2018, you went on a strict health-food diet. You tell people you kicked the painkillers. You talk about lots of juicing, fruits and vegetables. You live with Vitamix and IV-therapy with lots of supplements.

You are much healthier. Your weight is down to 210, which matches what you carried around when playing for the Browns.

But you also were hospitalized 15 months ago for a “brain bleed.” It’s another by-product of being sacked 273 times in your NFL career. That doesn’t count how many times you were knocked to the turf after throwing a pass. Quarterbacks were not protected by the officials with “roughing-the-passer” penalties in your era of the 1980s and 1990s as they are today.

THOSE WERE THE DAYS
Bernie Kosar and the fans who loved him back in the 1980s. Kosar had a 10-4 career record vs. Pittsburgh.Plain Dealer Historical Collection


WALK WITH BERNIE

You are talking about this now because you are involved with The Concussion Legacy Foundation headed by Chris Nowinski. On Saturday morning, you are heading “Team Bernie” for a 5K walk called The Race To End CTE.

You want your friends to come to St. Clair Avenue, Mall B at 7 a.m. to join you in the walk to raise awareness and funds. Your Browns teammate Bob Golic also will be there. Here is where to register for the marathon.

People ask if it was worth it, playing football and then all the suffering that followed. You also know you made some poor financial and other decisions that made life harder.

But you tell them, “I don’t regret it. I believe I was called to play for the Browns; it was what I was meant to do.”

You are grateful for the fans, for Cleveland and yes, even for a chance to battle for those who now suffer from CTE.


“It’s my last big game,” you say. “And it’s an important one.”

Hard to believe the browns did not have a first or second round draft pick. Best draft in awhile.

Too bad this board is dead. Browns are going to have their best team since one led by Bernie, HB, others need to get back here for the fun !