The Browns aren't just mismanaging Taylen Green. They are bungling their whole QB operation.
The Cleveland Browns' problems are numerous. Taylen Green is just one small reflection of a much larger dysfunctional operation. Green and his lack of preseason playing time reveal far deeper flaws and failures inside the building in Cleveland. There are so many amateur-hour realities to sort through. We have to start somewhere and carve out a path which shows how badly this organization is stumbling through the preseason.
The first and biggest problem in the Browns' organization is that the general manager and the coach are plainly not aligned. The GM, Andrew Berry, picked Taylen Green. The coach, Todd Monken, refuses to play him in the preseason. The preseason is when fringe roster players have to play. Otherwise, why draft them in the first place? There has to be an agreement between the front office and the coaching staff that if players are drafted, they will at least be tested and challenged in the preseason. It's not the coach's job to make draft picks his starters. If they don't pan out, they will be benched or traded or released. It is the coach's job, however, to try out the players the GM drafts or otherwise acquires through various transactions. The GM buys the groceries, the coach is paid to cook the meal.
Todd Monken isn't even giving preseason snaps to Taylen Green to see if he has any chance of measuring up. No one is saying Monken is obligated to consider Green as his QB1 or play him for a majority of any preseason game. He is obligated to at least play Green and give the young man a chance, however small, of being able to demonstrate in live game action what he is capable of. This is fundamental organizational malpractice. If the Browns were never going to play Taylen Green in the preseason, they should have either picked a different player in the sixth round of the draft (at a position where they didn't have a backlog of players) or traded out of that pick for a future draft consideration. This is very dumb and wasteful on a basic level.
What also has to be said is that after seemingly thinking Deshaun Watson was the likely starting quarterback for Week 1, the Browns are realizing they made a mistake. Watson was horrible against the Buffalo Bills this past Saturday and gave a complaint-filled postgame presser in which he basically threw Browns fans under the bus. This would seemingly mark the end of Watson's run in Cleveland, but the Browns appear to be stuck with him for one more year. This raises the question of why they drafted a fourth quarterback this year instead of clearing out their QB room for 2027, when an Arch Manning or another enticing QB prospect might be on the board. The decision to pick Taylen Green is part of a disastrous series of quarterback decisions which go far beyond the Arkansas signal-caller. How the Browns get out of this mess becomes less understandable and visible with every passing week.
