When Brandon Weeden joined "NFL AM" on Wednesday, the Cleveland Browns quarterback addressed one of his primary weaknesses from a season ago.
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Those dreaded batted passes.
Weeden led the league with 21 batted balls during his rookie campaign, according to ProFootballFocus.com. That would make some sense from the Browns' previous starter, the diminutive Colt McCoy, but Weeden is 6-foot-4, presumably tall enough to peer over surging defensive linemen.
"You really can't work on it," Weeden told NFL Network. "It's something that if you think about it all the time, it will probably create more problems. I think there are a lot of reasons they happen. One being me patting the football, which I've talked about is one thing I've worked on this offseason to get rid of the habit of patting the football before you release it. That just gives those guys an extra half a second to jump up and bat it down.
"It's just a part of taking three-step drops from under center as well. When you are under center, you are not very far from the line of scrimmage and you are trying to throw over guys that are (6-foot-4), (6-foot-5), with long arms. You got to throw it through the windows. Unfortunately, it happened last year. I don't know why, but I'm going to do my part, whatever I got to do to throw around those guys to make it happen."
Respected tape-watchers believe Weeden will get it done in Year 2. NFL.com's Bucky Brooks tagged Weeden as his choice for this season's most improved passer, and ESPN's Ron Jaworski believes the presence of offensive coordinator Norv Turner will morph Weeden into a "rock-solid" starter.
It has been a while since Cleveland has seen one of those.
Follow Marc Sessler on Twitter @MarcSesslerNFL.
