Cleveland Browns safety Donte Whitner said that rookie cornerback Justin Gilbert ‘needs to stop being a kid’ after Gilbert was unprepared for the team’s Week 16 game.
As the Cleveland Browns finish another disappointing campaign, the players must step back to self-evaluate and figure out where things went wrong. One player receiving scrutiny from others in the locker room is first round rookie and top ten NFL draft pick Justin Gilbert, who first had linebacker Karlos Dansby express doubt about his future. Add safety Donte Whitner to those concerned.
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“It’s time to grow up and not be a kid anymore. It’s a wasted year for him,” Whitner said, per ESPN. “There were so many ups, so many downs — a lot of it has been brought on by himself.
“He has to look himself in the mirror like Karlos [Dansby] said, he has to understand what he did wrong, what he needs to get better at, and make sure that you’re back here working out from day one when we return here to show everybody you have a good attitude and you want to go out there and be the player they drafted you to be.”
Whitner knows exactly the predicament in which Gilbert finds himself. Like Gilbert, Whitner was a defensive back selected eighth overall, a pick that was widely panned by fans in both instances as a reach.
Whitner has since worked to establish himself as a steady, if not spectacular, safety, but that didn’t happen overnight and he knows the work involved to get to that point.
If Justin Gilbert wants to hit even that mark, he’s going to have to work much harder than he has to date.
“You’ve got to go get it,” Karlos Dansby said of Gilbert on Monday. “If you want it, you’ve got to go get it.”Dansby added, “I don’t know if he’s going to make the transition. It has to be within him. He has to look in the mirror and do that himself.”
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