Browns coach Hue Jackson won't overreact to DeShone Kizer's rough afternoon in Baltimore.
After the rookie quarterback committed four of the team's five turnovers in a 24-10 loss to the Ravens on Sunday, Jackson emphasized patience and confidence in the youngster.
"He didn't play as well yesterday, but the sky isn't falling down by any stretch of the imagination," Jackson said Monday. "This guy is everything I think he is."
Kizer, making his first start in an NFL regular season road game, struggled to find a rhythm in a game in which he missed roughly a quarter because of a migraine. He passed for 184 yards on 15-of-31 attempts, threw three interceptions and was strip-sacked earlier in the contest.
It was an all-around frustrating effort in front of a raucous crowd at M&T Bank Stadium as Cleveland seemingly became its own worst enemy. When it was over, Kizer — who showed promise in the season opener against Pittsburgh — took ownership of his miscues.
"Everything's a lesson," he said after the game, "the good, the bad, the ugly."
Jackson echoed a similar sentiment, pointing to Sunday's struggles as a potential catalyst for growth.
"It doesn't happen when you play pretty well and all of you guys say, 'Wow, DeShone Kizer did some great things! Here we go.' It happens when all of a sudden a guy has been humbled," Jackson said. "That's why I say quarterbacks might as well start on their knees. You're going to bring them to their knees, so you might as well start off on your knees, so get down there. That's where he is today. He'll grow from this."
Kizer, who met with reporters in the locker room Monday, was his own biggest critic, describing the display as his "worst performance in any sport ever."
"I'm just going to try to use it as motivation going into this week to make sure that I can prove to my teammates, prove to the Cleveland fans, prove to this organization the type of guy that I actually am."
Jackson said Kizer carried that workmanlike approach into the team's facility Monday.
"He gets it. He's taking responsibility for it, knows that he needs to continue to work harder and better, understands in the National Football League that it is about accuracy, that you have to put the ball where you want to put it at all times, that the other team can't touch your ball. That is so important for our football team," he said.
"Our margin for error is not very big, and I think we get that. We have to be as close to perfect as we can be, and it starts at that position. He would be the first to tell you that. He knows that, and that's what we're going to work toward."
