I really just feel sorry for DeShone Kizer

It’s probably hard for any Cleveland Browns player to feel good about the season so far, but DeShone Kizer has tried to stay positive during his train wreck of a first year in the NFL. The Cleveland Browns rookie struggled to find any silver lining in the team’s 19-7 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 11, though.

The second-round pick finished Sunday with 16 completions on 32 attempts with one touchdown and two interceptions. But thanks to Blake Bortles and the Browns defense, Kizer had an opportunity to finally save the day for Cleveland and lead the team down the field at home for its first win. Instead of that heartwarming underdog story, Kizer fumbled in the last two minutes. Twice.

”It hurts,” Kizer said after the game. “I’m trying to do whatever I can to string together some games and continue to prove my development to my teammates and to continue to earn the respect of them. This is the first game that I’ve come off of the field feeling as if I didn’t prove that I developed in at least one area.”

That’s just plain sad, no matter what team you root for.

Especially when just a week ago Kizer passed for 232 yards with one touchdown and one interception in a 38-24 loss to the Lions that Hue Jackson called his best game yet. That momentum didn’t carry into Week 11.

Kizer, 21, leads the NFL in interceptions with 14, has just five touchdowns, and has generally just been painful to watch. After nine starts, he has a 54.0 passer rating — which would be the lowest mark for any quarterback to start the majority of a season since JaMarcus Russell’s 50.0 rating in 2009 and Akili Smith’s 52.8 in 2000.

It’s all bad, but is this really Kizer’s fault?

The Browns picked the 6’4, 230-pounder for his talent with the hope of eventually turning him into a franchise quarterback. But few thought he was the kind of polished player who could step in right away. Even his college coach said as much.

“When we turn over our young men to the NFL we want to say they’re finished products and DeShone’s not there yet,” Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly said in April. “He needed more time. We clearly understood his decision to go to the NFL and we supported him, but I was merely saying that, again, he’s a young man that could use more time at Notre Dame.”

With only Brock Osweiler, Cody Kessler and Kevin Hogan to beat for the job, Kizer won. And just like that he was an NFL starter before he was ready, on a team that isn’t ready to win and isn’t giving him any help. It was a train destined to run off the rails from the start.

It hasn’t helped that he’s been yanked around by the Browns too. In the months since he earned the starting spot, Kizer has been benched twice and the team came close to trading for A.J. McCarron.

The Browns are 0-10, on a one-way path to the No. 1 pick, and seem likely to take a quarterback to replace Kizer. He has six more games to try to make something out of his disaster of a rookie year, and hopefully he does, because right now he’s sounding more and more like a shell of the player who said he could be a combination of Tom Brady’s intellect in Cam Newton’s body.

“Right now, it’s not about proving to be a guy,” Kizer said Sunday. “It’s about winning a football game.”

Kizer was thrust into a no-win situation, and it looks like it’s starting to break him. That’s got to be the saddest part of a miserable season for the Browns.