Josh Jeez and Joe

I haven't looked too deep into this Josh Gordon thing, but it seems clear that the knucklehead blew off a summons or soebpeona or summons.

The paternity suit in/of itself isn't major, but failure to appear is a crime, and the dumbass just might have got himself suspended AGAIN.  Well I just hope there's more to this.  Maybe the dog ate it before he could read it...wow didn't he even get a lawyer holy...

Open letter to Josh Gordon:  Dear Josh:  WAKE UP!  Severely, ME.

My peeps back there tell me of a rumor that Joe Thomas is on the auction block.  I'm a tad skeptical, since he has been available for the right place since the beginning of the new regime, and a lot of fans and some pundits are in denial.

Since I've written about it, for all I know I'm the source of the "leak", and "the right price" got garbled into "the highest bidder".  English is a second language nowadays, so that happens constantly.

However, it is entirely possible that in the wake of the two quarterback injuries and the signing of Whitehurst (instead of somebody better), he finally threw his hands up and asked to be traded.

Realisticly, he's 30 years old, and if the Browns draft their quarterback of the future, no matter how good he is, he'll still be a rookie, and the rest of the team will get even younger.  

Note on the Whitehurst comment:  Brady Quinn, who has actually become an excellent, deeply insightful analyst on NFL Radio, panned that move vociferously.  Whitehurst has nine carreer starts.  There are other more experienced and younger guys on the street; better players, in fact.

I can only suggest that Whitehurst is a brain, and might be here as much to mentor Kessler as to back him up.

But this couldn't have escaped Joe Thomas.  They are, indeed, tanking now.  Whether or not it works out, the plan is to keep starting Kessler and accept the results.  

Many, including Willcotts and Quinn, think the Browns are doing the right thing in general.  Assuming they draft well (so far so good), and solve their quarterback problem, they will be scary in two or three years.

This has never been done before.  Never before has a team overhauled it's roster to this extreme, and made so many rookies a part of it's core right out of the gate.

But most of my ("my" as in vetted and REAL) experts who call the Browns the worst or second worst team in football also say they're on the right path.

Now, Josh McCown is just badass tough, and probably won't be down for many games.  I need an update on that injury, but it's not his throwing arm, and if there's not a broken bone, he will be back soon.  As it is, they had to expose Scooby Wright to waivers to make room for Whitehurst.

I want to tell Brady, I suspect they picked a guy who fans won't be chanting for when Kessler screws up, deliberately.

But back to Big Joe:  He bought into this, and probably still expects the plan to succeed.  He thought the Browns could get somewhere in 2017 and farther in 2018 with RG3.  Now the guy is out, but even before he went down, he wasn't doing that well.  

Joe could wait a couple years, but not longer.  I do think he asked to be traded, and that it was his agent who leaked this rumor.

As for Sashi and company, I can tell you with confidence that the asking price was a first and a third round pick, and nobody would meet it.  (It might well have been Garopollo, and the Browns adding the sugar, btw but Bill aint buyin and I don't blame him).

I suspect that Joe asked for this, and Sashi might now conduct an open auction.  This is what I would do.  Joe Thomas has earned his right to make this request, and it's not all about numbers.  You want your players to see that you are honorable and fair (if doing the right thing isn't enough).

Only decent teams will be interested in Joe Thomas due to his age.  As much as any skill player, he could turn a good team into a contender or a contender into a home field favorite.  These teams, as is, can be expected to draft in the bottom third of each round.

For these reasons, immediate help is more valuable than draft picks.

Prior to the last draft, I had thought the Seahawks might deal for him, but they seem to have everything fixed.  I haven't checked out the other teams in that category yet, but there are ten or eleven of them, and left tackles don't grow on trees (let alone a future Hall of Famer who PFF says is as good as ever).  (I finally subscibed!  Excuse me if I start sounding like Terry Pluto).

An auction would be smart here.  Teams who balked at a first and third rounder before would be more motivated if they knew Big Joe was coming off the board.  Sashi could conceivably get even more.

DISCLAIMER: All of this is pure speculation based on a rumor, which might have originated from a blog like this one, in which case...nevermind.