NL Belron
On Monday, September 17 the Cleveland Browns and the New England Patriots completed a trade that sent former Brown, Josh Gordon to the Patriots in exchange for a 5th round draft pick. The deal was recently made after Josh Gordon was injured his hamstring.
According to cincinnati.com, the wide-receiver was filming a social media commercial when the injury occured. It seemed as if the Cleveland Browns organization had enough of Gordon’s off-the-field issues and injuries. The once league-leader in most reception yards in 2013 and was also elected to All-Pro in just his second year in the league with the Browns.
It looked like the young star was headed up, but instead his career has been plagued with drug abuse and league substance abuse violations. His drug problems date all the way back to his sophomore year in college when he was found with marijuana in his friends car. Gordon violated the NFL’s drug policy too many times in 2014 and was unable to play in the NFL for the next three seasons.
During those three years, the former Baylor University product underwent a long rehabilitation period. Finally, after three years he made a late-season comeback in week 13 of 2017 with the Browns and saw slow production.
Gordon appeared in two games this year with the Browns, making it into the endzone once in Week 1 against the Pittsburgh Steelers. After Week 2 of the season, the Browns were looking to either trade or release Gordon, aka “Flash”.
The Patriots jumped on the opportunity and took the risk of signing a player like Josh who has had problems in the past. Only giving up a 5th round pick is not much to gamble on a guy who could turn out to produce some type of numbers for the Pats this season.
In my opinion, it is a fresh start for the veteran that should be happy with this chance that he gets. He arguably has the greatest quarterback of all-time throwing to him in Tom Brady and gets to play for something other than pride, something the Browns have seemed to do a lot the past years. He will go from a team that hasn’t had a consistent quarterback in place for 20 years, to a team who has had the same quarterback for nearly 20 years.
It will be interesting to see how he fits into New England’s system and how much production he will give for the first few weeks of play. There are plenty of mouths to feed with all of the weapons Brady has to throw to. But who knows, maybe Josh can turn into a big play receiver and bring style to New England. He should be fun to watch.