For most of the media in Cleveland, speculation about who the starting quarterback will be when the Browns run out of the tunnel on Sunday has ended: Brady Quinn should and will be the guy.
While I don’t necessarily disagree, I’m not sure my reasons for feeling similarly are the same as theirs. I believe the Browns have an asset in Quinn that the previous regime spent assets to acquire - the organization needs to determine the value of this asset, something that probably entails Quinn playing the entirety of a substantial amount of games.
As with many things in life, however, there is a counterargument to this point of view, and it revolves around the value of the unknown, the depth of the team’s weaknesses, and how Alpha Dog sees the future of the franchise.
Like I’ve written in the past, we don’t know much about Brady Quinn. There’s no firm body of work to analyze and discussions about his future performance are merely speculation. The coaches know more than we do because they see what’s going on in the huddle and in the infamous classroom. I’m sure they have a sense of how well he’ll do based on past experiences, but they can’t really know.
And I’m sure they’re smart enough to be aware of this.
This raises an interesting question. Could Quinn’s potential be more valuable than his actual production? In other words, could he be a more valuable asset for the Browns now when no one really knows how good he is than once he starts playing and his true worth is determined?
As we know from observing numerous pro drafts and reading books like Moneyball, player personnel executives have been making decisions based on potential for pretty much all of history. It’s a consistently risky practice that rarely pays off - but this doesn’t stop execs and scouts from going down that road because talent evaluators make their name spotting diamonds in the rough and “creating” players, not by objectively analyzing the same concrete information that everyone else has access to. It’s a high risk high reward gambit.
Inevitably, this means Quinn’s potential has value - how much, of course, is hard for us, as outside observers, to say. And whether or not it’s higher than his actual value is impossible to say since that’s a complete unknown.
But what if Mangini thinks the rest of his team is so weak that it really doesn’t matter who’s playing quarterback?
As footnoted in The Blind Side by Michael Lewis, football stats analyst Ben Alamar argues that “time in the pocket and the rate at which the quarterback is under pressure are the two most important aspects of a team’s performance (both offensively and defensively).”
So what if the offensive line isn’t any good? What if the defense can’t pressure opposing quarterbacks? Further, what if Alpha Dog believes the QB position is overvalued, that it’s really all about the system and how the different pieces fit within that system?
We can certainly be sure that one player does not make a team in the NFL.
Taking this logic one step further then, let’s imagine that maybe the most valuable QB to Mangini is the one that can get him the most in return from some other team. If we’re to believe that Quinn’s potential is the biggest selling point of any of the three QBs that are currently on the roster than it makes no sense to play him with flawed players, lose games, maybe see him get hurt, and watch his value deteriorate. It makes more sense to play Anderson and trade Quinn to a desperate franchise that could be fleeced by the allure of his potential.
Let’s not forget that there’s also the distinct possibility that Mangini believes Brett Ratliff is the future QB of this franchise - he didn’t trade for him for the hell of it - and whoever has the spot now is merely a placeholder, at least for this year and maybe for next season as well.
There’s no way to know for sure, but if Anderson ends up starting on Sunday and Cleveland Browns Stadium erupts into an earthquake of boos, this is at least one stab at what’s going on in the mind of Mangini.
