Memories

Browns coach Hue Jackson has a memory problem when it comes to evaluating quarterbacks he has coached in the past.

With regard to DeShone Kizer, his newest quarterback, the so-called quarterback whisperer said Thursday, “I don’t know that I’ve coached a guy with his kind of skill set.”

Time to jog the whisperer’s very selective memory.

Like when he was quarterbacks coach and then offensive coordinator at Southern California in 1998 and 1999, when a 6-5, 230-pound kid named Carson Palmer arrived at USC. 

Jackson later met up with Palmer when he was wide receivers coach with the Cincinnati Bengals from 2004 to 2006. And became his head coach in Oakland when the Bengals traded Palmer to the Raiders in 2011.

In 2008, Jackson became the quarterbacks coach of the Baltimore Ravens and shepherded a young kid from the University of Delaware named Joe Flacco through his first two seasons. Flacco is 6-6 and 235 pounds and later went on to lead the Ravens to the Super Bowl XLVII title in 2013.

Two quarterbacks with skill sets that have produced numerous victories in the National Football League coached at one time by one Hue Jackson, who also developed 6-2 Andy Dalton into a pretty good NFL quarterback at Cincinnati. He came with some nice skill sets, too.

So that’s Palmer, Flacco and Dalton, who have been shoved way back in Jackson’s memory bank and, at least according to him, do not own the skill sets possessed by Kizer, one of the Browns’ second-round selections in last weekend’s college draft.

Kizer, a very healthy 6-4½ and around 235 pounds, has a rocket attached to his right shoulder. That is unquestioned. Palmer, when he was younger, and Flacco (still to this day) own a similar weapon.

Jackson went on to say Kizer “is a big, powerful man, so I know he’s going to get compared to another guy on another team in our division.” An obvious reference to 6-5, 240-pound Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who has led the Steelers to two Super Bowl titles and is a sure-fire future Hall of Famer when he retires.

“I’m not going to talk about (Roethlisberger) because he’s that big and he has that kind of arm,” said Jackson. “He’s very mobile. . . . I don’t like to compare players and I know people will, but he (Kizer) has got to come in and do what he can do and be the best version of him and that’s what we’re going to allow him to do.”

Huh? Really? Jackson might not like to compare players, but that’s exactly what he did. Talk about putting pressure on a young kid. Using Kizer in the same breath with Roethlisberger is sort of like saying Rembrandt was a pretty good painter.

The whisperer and his selective memory would be much better off wandering into more benign territory to avoid inserting show leather in a most uncomfortable place.