With Robert Griffin III Injured, Josh McCown Looks to Salvage Another Season

In what is quickly becoming a season of disappointment for already desperate fans of Midwestern football teams starving for a Super Bowl win, Robert Griffin III, who the Cleveland Browns had hoped would be the key to their exciting new offense, has a fractured bone in his left shoulder and will miss at least the next eight games, ESPN reports. 

Griffin reportedly hurt the shoulder with just under four minutes left in the team’s 29-10 loss against the Philadelphia Eagles when Eagles cornerback Jalen Mills hit him near the sideline. The quarterback went in for the last three plays, handing the ball off each time. The injury won’t require surgery, and Cleveland coach Hue Jackson believes Griffin will be back this season. The injury comes a few weeks after Teddy Bridgewater of the Minnesota Vikings, another team fans were allowed to get excited about going into training camp, tore his ACL in pre-season so badly that it looks like he won’t even be ready for the 2017 season. 

If there’s any silver lining for fans, it’s that Griffin’s backup, 37-year-old Josh McCown, who last season made the Browns the ninth NFL franchise he’s played for over his career that started in 2002, has proven himself the kind of QB that can step into any weird situation and put up good numbers. Chicago Bears fans remember McCown as maybe the best quarterback of the Jay Cutler era (yes, possibly even better than Cutler himself), who put up 272 yards and two touchdowns agains the Green Bay Packers on Monday Night Football in 2013. Sure, he’s not Tom Brady or Cam Newton, but when you’re a Midwestern football club with a title drought that has lasted five decades, getting an everyman type guy like McCown to lead the team could prove to at least be exciting for Cleveland fans.