As the National Football League draft of 2014 rapidly approaches, the Cleveland Browns are scouring the league for possible quarterbacks, even as Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel remains a possibility for the holder of the fourth pick in the draft.
Among the players the Browns are bringing in for upcoming minicamps are former top-three draft pick Vince Young and NFL journeyman Tyler Thigpen, Yahoo! Sports Shutdown Corner is reporting.
Young, drafted in 2006 by the Tennessee Titans, has a 31-19 win-loss record as an NFL starter, though the last game he threw a pass in was Week 13 of the 2011 season, when he was quarterback with the Philadelphia Eagles. He threw four interceptions that day in a 31-14 loss to the Seattle Seahawks.
#Browns GM confirmed Vince Young and Tyler Thigpen will be at voluntary minicamp tomorrow. @Mr_KevinJones has more http://t.co/l0FKqQeFTY
— Cleveland Browns (@Browns) April 28, 2014
“Our interest in Vince is that he’s been productive and he’s had success in the National Football League,” Cleveland Browns General Manager Ray Farmer said at a pre-draft news conference, reported by the Christian Science Monitor. “We wanted to take the opportunity to get a chance to see where he was. We’ve been kind of following him through the offseason and he had been doing some things that kind of caught our eye and made us kind of take note and we wanted to see what that looked like in his own time frame.”
The current quarterback slated as the starter for the Browns this upcoming season is Brian Hoyer, who is coming off knee surgery. A significant appeal to both Young and Thigpen is that they are both mobile quarterbacks, a key quality in new coordinator Kyle Shanahan’s offense.
“They both are very good athletes,” Farmer said. “They both have had relative success — I know Vince you would easily say probably more than Tyler. That’s a good piece. I think Kyle would tell you that he likes a quarterback that is mobile. The offense definitely is going to require the quarterback to do different things, play outside the pocket to some degree.”
But everything might change on draft day if the Browns have the opportunity to draft Johnny Manziel, who, as the USA Today puts it, is the “enigma of NFL draft quarterbacks.”
If there are reservations, Farmer isn’t revealing any. When asked about the possibility of drafting Manziel, Farmer said, “The question is, do I get a chance to take him?
“I don’t think I have any reservations with who Johnny is. We had a lot of conversations, spent a lot of time with him. He’s a good young man.”
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