Former Browns Head Coach Hue Jackson admits he was a huge fan of Carson Wentz

The Cleveland Browns front office didn’t love Carson Wentz, but their head coach, Hue Jackson sure did.

It feels like yesterday when the Philadelphia Eagles made the franchise-changing trade with the Cleveland Browns in 2016. The Eagles knew that they had to get within the top three picks in order to get their hands on California’s Jared Goff, or North Dakota’s Carson Wentz.

All of the draft analysts had the Browns taking Wentz at No. 2 that year, but they decided to pass up on him, and the Eagles, thankfully, took advantage of that. It was a significant discussion around the league for the past three years. The Browns front office continued to convince themselves that they made the right move because Carson Wentz wasn’t ‘worth the second overall pick.’

Fast forward to 2018, and the Eagles are not only Super Bowl Champions, but they have Wentz, who performed at an MVP caliber level last year. He is currently looking even better than ever this year despite coming off of an ACL, and LCL tear a little under a year ago.

Since that ridiculous turnout from the Wentz trade, a lot of things have changed in Cleveland. Their general manager at the time, Sashi Brown was fired last year. And now, the Browns head coach for the previous three seasons, Hue Jackson has been terminated as well.

With Jackson officially out of the picture in Cleveland, he hasn’t had a problem speaking honestly about his time with the Browns. Of course, everybody wanted to know his true feelings on a few quarterbacks that the Browns passed up on too before Baker Mayfield. And everybody wanted to know about Carson Wentz, specifically.

Nothing but nice things to say:

"“Oh my gosh, yes. Did I like Carson Wentz? Hell yes. He did something that no other quarterback did. I give them three minutes to memorize the book and put on the (white) board. He put it all on the board in two minutes and 48 seconds. I’ve never had a guy do that ever in my coaching career.“But the plan was never to take a quarterback that year. It was all about trading back to get picks. If you’re doing that you’ve got to pick the right players.”"

Is anybody surprised here? Of course, we knew that the Browns regretted giving up on Wentz in 2016. We also know that Wentz was mightily impressive during his NFL Combine process, which sent his draft stock sky high. For a guy who is dedicated to mastering the playbook and game film, Wentz was mentally one of the most impressive quarterbacks in his draft class.

At this point, the Browns are finally satisfied with their guy Mayfield, which is great. But we can’t help but say “I told you so” to the fellas’ over there in Cleveland. They tried to deny Wentz’s value for too long, and it’s cool to hear somebody over there finally admit that Wentz is in fact, a valuable franchise quarterback.