Quinn out, Anderson back in for Browns

His biggest play last Sunday was his last big play of the season.

Sure, Brady Quinn, the Notre Dame poster boy, finished out the game, turning his 24-yard bootleg into what would be the game-winning points. But Quinn also hurt his right foot on the play, and the injury has ended his season.

His getting hurt was the last thing Browns coach Eric Mangini wanted.

Make no mistake here, Quinn wasn't Mangini's ideal quarterback. No other alternative on the Browns is. But Quinn was Mangini's best option, considering those alternatives. Now with Quinn sidelined, Mangini has to use Derek Anderson, whose return to the lineup threatens to revive the quarterback controversy that began this season.

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Even in Browns win, Quinn provides little help

Not sure what to make of the Browns these days. Now, I can't see this team as among the league's elites, regardless of how many games it runs off as this season of disappointment staggers to a conclusion.

But these Browns are showing life, a pulse that belies their 3-10 record. They haven't quit on their embattled coach, whose tenure at the team's helm might be a new general manager away from its end.

The hand coach Eric Mangini was dealt might not be one any coach should have been told to play. Mangini was brought in to put together a puzzle that had pieces missing. He inherited a football team with little talent, and he had a quarterback controversy that never did sort itself out.

Mangini didn't help matters with his waffling on Derek Anderson and Brady Quinn, a strategy that didn't engender confidence in either man. Both have played like quarterbacks with no belief in themselves.

The job is now in Quinn's hands -- again. But what Quinn has shown in his last three games, two of which were wins -- suggests he holds a loose grip on it. He has played like a quarterback with no feel for the position and no confidence.

Look at his latest performance. In a 41-34 win Sunday, Quinn was -- how to put it kindly -- a caretaker. His contribution to the win was a 24-yard bootleg that kept alive a fourth-quarter drive which led to the winning touchdown.

Take away that run, and the Browns would have been better off sticking Josh Cribbs behind center. Quinn completed 10 passes, a measly total in a game that saw the Browns score 41 points. His quarterback rating was 27.7. His passing yards came to 66. That's no misprint: 66 yards.

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Justice is served: 3 up and 3 down ...

THREE UP ... 1. Can't wait to see middleweight champ Kelly Pavlik back in the ring. His absence hasn't helped the sweet science -- nor Kelly's bank account. There are big-money paydays out there for good fighters, and tough guy like Pavlik (aka "The Ghost"), sidelined 10 months with a string of injuries, should scoop up some of it. So news that he'll be fighting Miguel Espino on Dec. 19 is something to applaud.

2. I have a friend who lives and dies with the Raiders, so he has to be pleased that Bruce Gradkowski, the AFC Player of the Week, has emerged as the team's quarterback of the future. NFL teams have had their hits and misses at that position in recent years, so maybe instead of wasting No. 1 picks on quarterbacks, teams might be wiser to follow what the Raiders did: look for somebody else's discard. Who wouldn't take "Grad" over JaMarcus Russell, Matt Leinart or Brady Quinn?

3. I'm betting freshman John Wall will do a 'Melo Anthony: play one season in college, win a NCAA title and then head to the NBA. In this early hoops season, Wall has been as solid as the Great Wall and hotter than a wall of fire. There might be a better freshman than Wall, but he hasn't shown himself yet. Enjoy looking at this "great" Wall in "Bluegrass Country" while you can.

THREE DOWN ... 1. Some crooner once sang about fools falling in love, but someone also should have sang about how fools act like fools, as Greg Baker, the executive director of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, did when he signaled that the museum will jettison the figure who helped build the institution. Essentially, Baker slammed the museum's front door in the face of Buck O'Neil.

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For Browns, No. 3 can be best of all QBs

What I'll remember most about the Browns' 30-6 nightmare 11 days ago in Soldiers Field will be a pass play in the fourth quarter: Quarterback Derek Anderson, under siege in his end zone and trying to escape the rush, cocks his right arm and floats a pass nowhere near anybody wearing a Browns uniform.

Defensive back Charles Tillman dives for Anderson's floater, catches the ball while tumbling to the turf, scrambles to his feet and races toward the goal line. Tillman fends off tacklers along the way before rumbling into the end zone. It was another touchdown for the Bears, and another interception for Anderson.

More interesting to me, the pass was Anderson's last. Coach Eric Mangini, frustrated, pulled Anderson and replaced him with the prodigal son Brady Quinn.

It seems now as if Mangini's switch to Quinn will become permanent. He couldn't do worse than Anderson. For whatever else Anderson might be in life -- a good son, a solid citizen and a first-rate teammate -- he was a pathetic excuse for an NFL quarterback.

Look, Mangini could only trot out a disaster like Anderson for so long. At some point, the dour, dim-witted coach had to realize that a quarterback who ended a game with a QB rating of 10.5 wasn't good enough to stand behind center.

All of Anderson's performances this season had been noteworthy for their ineptitude, but his sorry play hit rock bottom against the Bears. In my mind, it was fool's thinking to keep using Anderson and then expect a better result.

To steal a few words from retired NFL coach Denny Green, Anderson was who I thought he was: a scatter-armed quarterback who couldn't hit the Gulf of Mexico if he stood on a dock in Key West, Fla.

I'm not, of course, an NFL coach; don't play one for TV either. What I am is someone who has watched and written about enough NFL games to know ineptitude when I see it. I have witnessed plenty of it while rooting for the Browns.

They have gone through more QBs than Madonna has gone through lovers. From Tim Couch to Trent Dilfer to Jeff Garcia to an endless line of others whose play fell below mediocre.

Browns fans have never made peace with mediocrity, despite the fact that's all they've witnessed since the team's rebirth a decade ago. They won't make peace with it now.

Their shouts to bench Anderson had been louder this week than they were in the bye week, and the tone-deaf Mangini couldn't ignore them.

Under ordinary circumstances, his decision would have been easier. He'd have let the job stay in Quinn's hands without much thought.

Quinn, no star in the marking, isn't the answer. He had opened the '09 season with the job, but he showed he didn't have the skills to hold on to it.

Did his skills somehow improve while tethered to the Browns bench? How much better is Quinn now?

Well, that's a separate question altogether, and the answer collides with a bigger concern for Mangini: using Quinn could end up costing the team $11 million in contract incentives.

On a team with more holes than a brick building in Baghdad, Mangini can't afford the salary-cap hit playing Quinn might cost the team. He won't do markedly better than Anderson, anyway. Peyton Manning, Drew Brees or Tom Brady might be unable to play well for this collection of talent Mangini has at his quarterback's disposal.

Quinn isn't Manning, Brees or Brady. He never will be. Neither will Anderson, which is the damnable part of it for Browns fans. They want better, but better was never going to come with Anderson at quarterback.

Nor with Brady Quinn.

After observing another dispiriting loss, Mangini should keep Quinn on the bench next to Anderson and put his faith in Brett Ratliff, the team's No. 3 QB. Ratliff's the horror show in orange and brown that nobody has seen yet.

Fans need to show Sanchez patience

It’s easy to fall in love with a mirage, because what you think you see in front of you with 20/20 clarity isn’t necessarily what you end up having when you cut to its core. No better example of that is Mark Sanchez, the rookie quarterback for the New York Jets. Three weeks ago, their fans were christening Sanchez as the second coming of Joe Namath, an icon in the Big Apple. Sanchez was the city's newest golden boy, a ready-for-the-pros passer with the Southern Cal pedigree. His play had taken the Jets to the summit of their division and made their fans forget the Bret Favre era. How handsome does the Favre era look today? Sanchez is now coming off three nightmarish performances, the kind that might make the film “Paranormal Activity” look G rated. His most recent start was one that only reminds NFL fans of the difficulty involved in jumping from the college game to the pros. The transition, however, has never been altogether seamless, a fact Sanchez discovered the hard way after a 16-13 loss Sunday to the Bills. He deserved the blame for it. Some people might not think it fair to saddle Sanchez with this loss. One player shouldn’t be blamed for what wrong against the Bills; other Jets must share the blame – a giant piece of it. But people can’t have it two ways. If they want to credit Sanchez for a 3-0 start, they have to cite his play for the team's 3-3 record today. Surely, they have little choice but to do so in the loss Sunday. For he never found answers to the defensive schemes the Bills threw in front of him. Under pressure time and again, Sanchez hurried his passes (10 of 29 for 119 yards) and missed open receivers throughout the game. At game’s end, he had thrown five interceptions, the last of which led to a game-winning field goal in overtime. Sanchez had a game that should lead to restless nights. He’ll see Bills dancing in his dreams for the rest of this week – and maybe next week, too. It would be hard to forget five interceptions. After a game like this, Sanchez has to harbor doubts. So must Jets fans. Their euphoria has been tempered. They must look at Sanchez for what he is: a work in progress. Few quarterbacks can step off a college campus and into a starting job in the NFL. Some men need years to transition into a polished product. Just ask Brady Quinn, J.P. Losman, Tim Couch, Vince Young, Kyle Boller, Rex Grossman, Byron Leftwich, Alex Smith, Matt Leinart or Joey Harrington. They all entered the NFL with much fanfare, but their careers have been unimpressive, more the careers of a journeyman than of a No. 1 pick. Their struggles offer sage lessons. A strong arm doesn’t ensure a distinguished career. Playing quarterback in the NFL is a mind game as much as anything else. It demands a quarterback have the ability to read defenses, to think on his feet and to remain cool in the face of pressure – from opposing linemen and from critics. Sanchez will be hearing plenty from the critics this week, as all quarterbacks do after a lousy performance. Think this is journalistic hyperbole? Well, just listen to the howls coming out of Philadelphia after Donovan McNabb’s horrible display Sunday against the then winless Oakland Raiders. Rex Ryan, a first-year head coach, is unlikely to bench Sanchez. But if Ryan had expected according-to-Hoyle performances from his rookie each week, he was asking for miracles. He will have to show more patience with his gifted pupil than Jets fans will. For Ryan must believe that all the good things Sanchez did in his first three starts weren’t illusions but snapshots of what he can do with more experience.

Browns have two QBs, none worth a darn

Browns coach Eric Mangini has faced the one thing he started the 2009 season trying hard to avoid. He has a quarterback controversy on his hands.

I can’t be hypercritical of his reluctance to entrust the job to anybody on his roster. Mangini had to pick among two pitiful options, and he picked Brady Quinn, a man whose skills aren't good enough to lead an NFL team to glory. Nothing Quinn did this season has proved this statement to be false; at best, he has shown he can be a backup for a bad team.

So how about Derek Anderson? Can he do any better than Quinn?

That’s the question Mangini and Browns fans sought answers to after Quinn, the Golden Boy from Notre Dame, played himself to the bench Sunday against the Ravens. Quinn, a former No. 1 pick, looked as inept as anybody who has played quarterback for the Browns since their reincarnation a decade ago.

The organization has been spitting out quarterbacks like Pez candy, and except for the Pro Bowl season Anderson put together in ’07, no one has taken ownership of the position long term. Quinn didn’t.

How bad Quinn has been is reflected in one set of numbers: 0-3.

I wish I could say his numbers were deceiving – that the Browns sported a won-loss record that misrepresented Quinn’s performance. But awful-and-3 is what the team has been under Quinn’s watch, which often reminded people of the defunct Tim Couch and Charlie Frye eras.

The Quinn era might be behind Browns fans -- thank goodness. But the way Mangini works, no one can be certain of it. He might still see a need to prove Quinn wasn’t a wasted a first-round pick, though wasted draft choices aren’t strangers to Mangini. Just look at his first draft as Browns coach. It didn’t yield much talent that is contributing.

That leaves Mangini to rely on Romeo Crennell's leftovers, and most of them had shown for years they didn’t amount to much – Anderson included.

Don't be seduced by Anderson’s 2007 success. It could have been just a confluence of extraordinary events, not necessarily an indication of his ability.

Uncertainty, however, remains on the latter point, but as bad as Quinn is, the ironfisted Mangini, a weak branch of the Bill Parcells coaching tree, might have a hard time justifying a decision to give Anderson the bulk of the playing time.

When Mangini benched Quinn after his disaster of a first half, the job seemed to belong to Anderson. But he took the field and also imploded in this 34-3 loss, which should get the merry-go-round at quarterback spinning again. Does Mangini turn next to Brett Ratliff, the third-string QB?

Regardless of whom Mangini settles on, he won’t have a productive quarterback until he surrounds him with more skilled pieces. He needs a fast, durable running back, a game-breaking wide receiver, a tight end who can block and catch and a stronger, more dependable right side of the offensive line.

It wouldn’t hurt the Browns if he could build a defense with the ability to stop opposing teams from turning a game into a scoring-fest. With either Quinn or Anderson, Mangini hasn’t put together a team that can pile up the points.

He might never have a team here that can do that, and he certainly won’t have one until he finds a quarterback who’s capable of running an offense effectively.

Neither Quinn nor Anderson has proved he can.

(Photo of Eric Mangini by bkrieger02's photostream)

Mangini's Browns no better than Crennell's

It might not matter who coaches the Cleveland Browns these days, because the coach has absolutely nothing to work with. The team was closer to being decent when it returned to town 10 years ago than it is today.

This second incarnation of the Browns, a franchise the NFL recreated from scraps after Art Modell spirited the original off to Baltimore in 1995, hasn’t been much to talk about. Nor is the team’s most recent performance: a 27-6 loss Sunday to the Broncos.

Losing to the Broncos is not unusual; those old Browns did so with regularity. But at least they routinely made a game of things in Denver; at least they went onto the field and looked like a polished NFL team.

Not much in these Browns resembles a polished team. They started the ’09 season with another coach, having hired and then jettisoned past coaches as if holding auditions for "American Idol."

Somebody named Eric Mangini, whom the Jets fired after last season, runs the show now. Since his arrival, Mangini has tried to instill discipline. His hard-driving style contrasts sharply with his predecessor Romeo Crennell's, whose approach mirrored a doting father’s.

No one on this Browns roster will warm to Mangini like a “father,” partly because he’s not much older than the men he coaches. He’s the sternest of taskmasters, a coach from the Bill Belichick School of Coaching, a school whose philosophy brooks no foolishness.

Crennell was also from the Belichick school, which serves as a reminder that not all graduates of Harvard and Yale will end up as successes. Crennell wasn’t, not with the Browns anyway.

To say Mangini has failed would be to judge him before all the tests have been taken. The early evaluation of his work, however, would earn the coach a failing grade.

The sample of his work here is too small: two games with 14 more to go this season. But in those two games – both ugly losses -- it’s been hard to see the product as any better than what Crennell or Butch Davis put on the football field.

The holes in Mangini’s team are everywhere, starting with a quarterback whose play has been tentative and uninspired. As with the coach, putting a letter grade on Brady Quinn now would be unfair. He remains little more than an untutored rookie.

From what Quinn has shown in his two starts, he’s not quite ready for the job. Does anybody think Mangini has a better option than Quinn on the bench?

The last thing Mangini needs is a quarterback controversy, so no need to dust off Derek Anderson’s name from the depth chart, even when some Browns fans might be calling for it.

To play musical chairs with his quarterbacks will merely complicate Mangini’s job, which is to return the Browns to glory, to revisit the days of Otto Graham, Jim Brown, Paul Warfield, Leroy Kelly, Brian Sipe, Bernie Kosar -- times when pride was as much a part of the organization as its orange helmets.

Since its rebirth a decade ago, the Browns have given their fans little to be proud of, and this season seems to hint thus fair that pride might have to go into hiding as it looks at another losing season.

The last thing Mangini wants is a quarterback controversy, so no need to dust off former Pro Bowler Derek Anderson’s name from the depth chart, even when some Browns fans might be calling for it.

To play musical chairs with his quarterbacks will merely complicate Mangini’s job, which is to return the Browns to glory, to recapture the championship days of Otto Graham, Jim Brown, Paul Warfield, Brian Sipe, Bernie Kosar -- times when pride was as much a part of the organization as its orange helmets.

Since its rebirth a decade ago, the Browns have given their fans so little to be proud of, and this season seems to hint thus far that pride might have to go into hiding again as it looks at another losing season.

Wait to see Quinn? No, not worth it

So, Brown fans waited for this?

For two years, they have clamored for Brady Quinn to take the reins of the team’s offense. Quinn, a first-round refugee of the Phil Savage regime, had the pedigree: an Ohioan, a Notre Dame alum with the golden boy’s persona.

Derek Anderson, Quinn’s rival for the job, was the rifle-armed gunslinger from Oregon – the outsider who never caught the fancy of Browns fans. For no matter what he did -- and Anderson did plenty during his Pro Bowl season of 2007 – he couldn’t get out from under Quinn’s shadow.

Now, he’s the backup, a quarterback whose credentials for NFL success look a lot flashier than Quinn's. He lost the starter’s job in a competition that was anything but open. How could Anderson expect to overtake a No. 1 pick?

As Anderson watched Sunday from the bench, Quinn produced a performance that reminded people of football’s past in Cleveland – oh, not the glory days of Otto Graham, Brian Sipe and Bernie Kosar, those old Browns stars; but the depressing days of futility under Tim Couch, Jeff Garcia and Charlie Frye.

Quinn kicked off the Eric Mangini era the same way as the Chris Palmer, Butch Davis and Romeo Crennell eras began: with a 34-20 loss.

It would be unfair to blame quarterbacks solely for how those eras started, and it would be unfair to blame Quinn solely for how the Mangini era began.

But his play contributed to the sorry beginning; it suggested to no one he could be the next Tom Brady, Drew Brees or Peyton Manning.

Instead of confident and cool, Quinn was tentative, seemingly unsure of what he wanted to do with the offense. He made bad passes here and there, and he didn’t do a thing to stretch the Vikings defense.

What he also didn’t do was show the take-charge mentality that seems to be part of a good quarterback’s DNA. Maybe that leadership can be cultivated. It certainly isn’t something Quinn can go to Sam’s Club and buy off the shelf.

Still, it was his show – finally.

Yet to say his play against Brett Favre and the Vikings should define him is unfair. Quinn is still green as NFL quarterbacks go, and he has time to grow into the position.

Time, however, isn’t something Browns fans might afford him. If he is to thrive under the pressure cooker of quarterbacking a team whose fans demand so much, Brady Quinn will need to play less like a cast member of the “Brady Bunch” and more like a Brady named Tom.

(Photo of Brady Quinn at practice by John K's photostream)

Quinn or Anderson? Pick one, Mangini

Eric Mangini must be out of his mind.

Now, I'm not trying to tell the man how to coach the Browns. He's got the credentials for that job; I don't. But it doesn't take a doctorate in the art of football to figure out it's wiser to make a decision now rather than later.

The decision that people in Cleveland await is the one Mangini has to make about who will be his starting quarterback. Since training camp opened in July, he's juggled Brady Quinn and Derek Anderson like a clown does tennis balls. Neither man has a sense of what the coach is looking for in this quarterback derby. Nor do Browns fans.

The secrecy that marks Mangini's button-down coaching style is unsettling. Fans like answers; they like to know what direction a team is going. But Mangini is navigating the football terrain as if he doesn't have a compass on what works in Cleveland.

I understand if he doesn't like the quarterbacks he inherited. He's been smart to take that approach when looking at the long term, because both quarterbacks are flawed. Quinn and Anderson haven't convinced anybody they can be the next Peyton Manning or Tom Brady. In Cleveland, they'd settle for anybody not named Tim Couch or Charlie Frye.

And Quinn and Anderson are those two anybodies.

Of course, they are all Mangini has to work with, and he's hamstrung both men with his own indecision. With the season opener 10 days away, he's fostered little confidence in whoever he hands the quarterback's job to.

At some point, he will have to pick between the two men, which probably makes their preseason performances tonight against the Bears the last chance to secure the job. The consensus of people who cover the team daily -- and they seem to have no more insight than the man behind the counter at the neighborhood 7/Eleven does -- is that the untested Quinn is ahead of Anderson, a Pro Bowler two seasons ago.

Yet what that consensus means is nothing, because Mangini holds the only opinion that matters. And he ain't talking yet.