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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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.

Call 'em the 'Clowns' and not the Browns

I heard someone say time is a terrible thing to waste. Don’t call me on who said it, ’cause I can’t remember. But whoever did has a point.

Trust me here.

I came to that conclusion after watching the Browns on TV this afternoon, which showed two things: No. 1, I place little value on my time; or No. 2, I have no life.

Now, I’d like to believe I do have a life – a wonderful life, too. No. 1 isn’t an appealing choice either, but I’m guessing it’s the more accurate of the two since I did sit in front of my television and watch the Browns lose, 31-3, to the Packers.

To call it a loss would be an act of charity. For the word “loss” might suggest the Browns showed up to play. They didn’t.

I've seen a lot of NFL games on TV in my life – hundreds; and I've seen a lot of sorry NFL teams -- tens. Heck, last season I drove to Detroit and sat in Ford Field as the Lions lost to the Titans on Thanksgiving Day. I don’t need to remind anybody that the Lions went winless that season.

Coach Eric Mangini’s Browns, now 1-6, can’t match that futility, although I'm not certain the Buccaneers (or the Titans) won’t. Not that it would matter to me; I don’t root for the Bucs. So were they to go 0-for-this-season-and-next, I wouldn’t have one sleepless night. I don’t have a second to spend on watching them play – win, lose or draw.

Besides, I’m sure their fans have as little patience for what’s happening in Tampa as I have for what’s happening here in Cleveland. Bad football is bad football, and I’m seeing plenty of it.

My frustration with these Browns is that they seem not to be getting better. Their offensive line, jerry-rigged from the start, is porous. Coach Mangini has assembled a collection of 300-pound Clydesdales who are allowing defensive linemen to take dead aim at quarterback Derek Anderson, who risks each week seeing his name on the injured reserve.

The few times Anderson has gotten to look down field he’s found no receiver open. Where have you gone, Braylon Edwards?

Yeah, you can’t catch a cold, but at least you served as a legitimate deep threat. You could get open, something that I can’t say about the men left to fill your spot.

But if missing you were the lone problem, I doubt I’d be as disappointed in what I’m witnessing. As shaky as you were, you did make plays once in a while. Nobody else can.

The team has no offense, no defense and no imagination. The Browns can’t block; they can’t tackle; and, well, they have no talent.

Even the quality of their coaching and the front office is suspect, a sad thought moving forward.

For Browns fans like me, the NFL is a long, grinding season, and I don’t know what we will have to look forward to as the rest of this season runs its course.

No reason to dream of the postseason; no reason to dream of many more victories then the one victory the team has, though I do give the Browns a chance to beat the Lions when the two teams meet later this season.

Until then, I won’t waste more time on what will be repeats of what I saw today: a stumbling, bumbling football team that should let its players audition for the Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus.

Send in the Clowns, and Mangini can play ringmaster.

A solid D plus a late TO = an ugly W

You hardly know what to make of a win that looked much like a loss, but if you’re somebody who cheers for the Cleveland Browns, you’ll settle for a 6-3 victory regardless of how ugly it looked. Think about it: The Browns had been rolling nightmarishly toward a futility that would match what the Detroit Lions did a season ago. Sixteen losses, although hardly guaranteed, did seem reachable, and coach Eric Mangini and the Browns did nothing Sunday to suggest they could win a game. They dropped passes, slogged around in the wind and, essentially, played as if it were an exhibition game. One thing that helped the Browns was a Buffalo Bills team that couldn’t get out of its way. The Bills stumbled and false-started from the opening whistle to the game’s end. Yet they might have escaped with a win (or a tie) if a muffed punt hadn’t set the Browns up for Billy Cuniff's game-winning field goal with 23 seconds left. The muff was a gift from the football lords, the sort bestowed on a hapless team like the Browns. They can’t beat many opponents on merit alone. Even in this victory, the Browns didn’t show that their short-term future under Mangini was overly promising. They didn’t self-destruct totally, but they didn’t do much to win the game with fine play. While it might be fitting to applaud the defense for its play, but to be overly kind to the defense would be to give too much credit to the Bills. To put it bluntly, they fielded an offensive line that couldn’t stop a Division III defense. How these Bills (1-4) had beaten anybody this season is a question that can’t easily be answered, not based on their performance Sunday. If the Bills aren’t the worst NFL team, they find themselves in the same league as the winless St. Louis Rams and Oakland Raiders. The three of them will be lucky to combine to win as many games as the Indianapolis Colts. It’s no Herculean chore to deconstruct a lousy team like the Bills, because they did so many things wrong that it would be silly to dwell on the few things they might have done right. The chore is to figure out, even with all the mistakes the Bills made, how the Browns couldn’t turn the game into a blowup. That, too, isn’t a chore. For the figuring can start with what has been one of the glaring weaknesses for the Browns this season: a bad quarterback. Browns fans have seen sorry play from quarterbacks for most of this decade, but few quarterbacks, not even the flawed Tim Couch or the inept Charlie Frye, had a game like Derek Anderson did and came away a winner. Anderson completed two of 17 passes for 23 yards. In Anderson’s defense, his receivers dropped a half-dozen passes, and maybe his statistics might have been more pleasing had those passes been caught. But he looked as shaky as he has been since Romeo Crennell -- and then Mangini -- refused to anoint Anderson the unquestioned starter for what he did in 2007 when his confident was sky high. Still, Anderson deserved some credit for not losing this game. Mind you, he did nothing to win it, but against a pitiful excuse for an NFL team like the Bills, he spared the Browns a possible loss simply because he kept turnovers to a minimum (one). When you’re a football team careening toward 16 losses, an ugly win halts a date with NFL infamy. Browns fans don’t have to worry anymore about matching what the Lions did, but can those fans, after witnessing the horror show that Anderson directed in Buffalo, think that anything better than a 15-loss season awaits them?

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.