He is actually my long lost brother. That’s why I’ve shown support for him here.
Okay, so that statement may be b.s., but I really do intend this to be an honest and forthright piece about D.A.
I regret writing the “I Don’t Want To Say We Told You So, But…” article after the game against the ‘Nati. Admittedly, I was drunk and probably a little emotional.
Having said that, the post came from a genuine place. I’ve always had a soft spot for D.A., ever since Week 1 in 2007 when Tim and I sat at a bar in Westwood and watched the Steelers trounce the Browns while a rotund man waved a Terrible Towel and a homeless guy told us that Butch Davis was the best coach the Browns ever had. The fans, he said, ran Butch out of town - and were also the reason Modell moved the team to Baltimore.
That week D.A. wasn’t good. So when we back to the bar the following week to watch the Browns play the Bengals, and the offense put up 51 points and D.A. threw for 5 TD, we were stunned. Everyone at O’Hara’s was following the contest, a 51-45 Browns victory. The quality of play was utterly unexpected. Frankly, it was dream-like given the fact that we assumed the Browns might not win 4 games that year after seeing how poorly they played in Week 1.
As time passes, I find myself becoming less and less of a pure fan - I tend to look at sports more clinically now, having found myself on the wrong side of anger and sadness too many times in the past - but that was a pure fan moment. It was an experience I shared with my brother at the beginning of a very difficult year in my life and is something I will always be able to cherish.
I suppose that’s why I never understood all of the criticism that’s seemed to follow D.A. every step of the way during his career in Cleveland. You’d all laugh me off of the internet if I tried telling you Anderson is a perfect quarterback. I don’t believe football is a great sport for stats, especially individual ones, but plenty of statistics would make that assertion look silly. Don’t worry, I’m not inclined to say Anderson is perfect, great, or even good. I’m not sure yet what he is. I want to see how he reacts to Alpha’s coaching, which will try and guide him into not throwing as many picks. But the most important stat in my mind at this point - wins - makes him seem fairly average, as he’s 13-14 over 4 seasons.
What troubles me is all of the vitriol tossed D.A.’s way. For a franchise that has only had two winning seasons since 1999, the year they returned to the NFL, the 2007 D.A.-led team was probably its brightest moment. Why not root for a guy that had something to do with that?
I write a lot about not dwelling too much on the failures of the past, and I suppose this really should go both ways, with both the positive and the negative, but I promise that D.A. doesn’t want to lose football games. Even if you’re cynical and you believe that it’s only because he knows his future in the NFL is tied to his ability to win…D.A. wants to repeat the success he’s had previously.
Because so much of the angst that’s been aimed at D.A. seems unreasonable and illogical to me, I’ve always attributed it to the fan base’s love affair with Quinn as an Ohio boy that they got to watch in college, playing for Notre Dame. My whole problem with the support for Quinn was that it was blind - there was very little evidence to suggest that he could be effective in the NFL.
But maybe I’ve been too hard on Brady. I believe we should all support the players on the teams we root for more than we do. That’s what it means to be a fan, I think, to be an extended member of a team. I know I’ve fallen victim to being overly critical at times. I try to be as objective as analytical as possible, but I’m sure I can do better. In this case, I just wanted to see the Browns be competitive - and I felt that the evidence stated that D.A. gave the team the best shot to do that.
As for the game on Sunday against the Bills, it’s not fair to talk about D.A. by simply saying “he went 2/17 and had a passer rating of 15.1, he shouldn’t be in the NFL.” Any conversation about his performance has to include the following qualifiers:
1) The offense was re-set yet again. The #1 receiver was removed and replaced, and essentially two new receivers were added, Chanci Stuckey and Brian Robiskie.
2) The wind was swirling at 34MPH.
3) 12 balls that D.A. threw hit the hands of his receivers and were not caught. Being lenient, at least 7 of those balls could be considered drops.
4) The game plan was clearly designed around running the football, both because of the wind and because of the Bills defense. More often that not, the team was running the ball the first two downs and throwing on third down and long when the Bills knew exactly what was coming. 12 of Anderson’s 17 passes came on third down and 8 of those were on 3rd down and 5 or longer.
Finally, I’ll say that Carson Palmer is 24th in the NFL in passer rating. Yet, I heard today on PTI that he should be considered an “elite” QB. I would say this is because the Bengals are 4-1, and he’s made plays at the end of games. I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with this statement. But analysts like to pick and choose which numbers support their argument instead of consistently looking at the same components and allowing a case to emerge from there.
Part of the mission of JMID is to always do the latter. And however D.A. plays this Sunday against the Steelers, I’ll look at his performance critically - but as a fan of the Cleveland Browns, I will be rooting for him.
I’m a little late on doing this because of some traveling, but I wanted to look a little bit more closely at how D.A. played on Sunday. I’ve seen a lot of comments at Cleveland.com assailing him for throwing the interception at the goal line without giving him any credit for the fade he tossed to Mohamed Massaquoi (who Tim has nicknamed “The Prophet”) that brought the offense to the goal line, the TD he slipped in to Steve Heiden, etc.
I agree that the pick was crucial, but based on what Bernie Kosar said to Michael Reghi it was a “perfect” throw that Heiden should have curled back for. More importantly, one play never makes a football game - or any game - as we talked about ad nauseum after the Magic beat the Cavs in the EC Finals. More importantly, the idea that Anderson - or any QB - is never going to throw interceptions…well, that’s not very realistic.
If we look at the interception leaders from last year, we find that two of the league leaders in picks played in the Super Bowl (Roethlisberger aka John Kruk threw 15 and Kurt Warner threw 14). That’s nearly one INT a game.
Also, it’s sort of silly to look at INT without looking at number of pass attempts. For instance, Brett Favre led the league in picks with 22. He also averaged one INT every 23.7 pass attempts. Jay Cutler averaged one every 34.2 attempts, and Drew Brees threw a pick every 37.4 he flung the ball.
To put things in perspective, D.A. threw the ball 48 times on Sunday.
Kosar essentially told Reghi that when he re-watched the game tape from Sunday, his opinion of Anderson’s performance went from “really good” to “great.” He used the word “phenomenal.”
To give some support to early arguments made here, Kosar also credited the way D.A. was throwing the ball with helping out the run game.
D.A. came out with 4.35 TYA or .9 yards better than the Quinn game. Last year that would’ve been 24th in the league. Certainly this is at least somewhat of a counterpoint to what Kosar said. In analyzing the stat more closely just now, I’m becoming a little hesitant about it because the highest weighted stat in the equation is INT, which is valued at 45 times the number of picks and is subtracted from the total number of yards thrown.
Weighting INT so high, obviously, contradicts my opinion that picks aren’t always that important, e.g. on balls thrown deep down the field, Hail Mary passes, etc.
If nothing else, TYA gives the D.A. haters and the InadeQuinn lovers a reason to rejoice.
From here on out, obviously Anderson needs to perform at this level - or higher - consistently. We’ll see how the offense looks without Braylon Edwards on Sunday…
Today, the Browns looked like a real football team. They lost the game, but there was reason to be encouraged.
Yes, there were too many dropped passes. Yes, there was D.A.’s interception at the goal line. Yes, there was some conservative play calling when the team got a lead.
But the team moved the ball, they stopped the Bengals on multiple occasions, they scored touchdowns…
But it’s too late.
This game would’ve meant a lot more had it been Week 1 or Week 2. Now the Browns are 0-4, not 0-1, or 0-2, or even 0-3.
In other words, had Alpha Dog started D.A. in Week 1, we’d all feel better right now than we do.
The season is all but lost - let’s see if D.A. can help Mangini save the regime. And finally, please don’t overemphasize interceptions…they aren’t good, I agree, but if a QB can’t move the ball then it really doesn’t matter. Sometimes you can’t succeed if you don’t take risks, and you don’t make mistakes.
Brett Favre, who’s only had one losing season in his career…I see you.
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.
In my mind, the Browns have an interesting decision to make at the quarterback position. And when I say “the Browns” I really mean Eric Mangini because let’s be honest, we all know who’s calling the shots.
On one hand, you have Brady Quinn, who had a very high completion percentage in the pre-season (67.7% through 31 attempts) with 1 TD and 1 INT but little regular season game experience and an arm that may not be capable of consistently throwing the deep out. Also, he apparently does not use MySpace.
On the other hand, you have the man Clevelanders love to hate, Derek Anderson and his below average completion percentage (54.6% for his career and 56.5% in his 2007 Pro Bowl season). In the pre-season so far, DA has hit 57.7% of his passes on 26 attempts with zero TD passes and 2 INT. There’s no question about Anderson’s ability to make the big play, but he’ll also make mistakes with inaccurate tosses and struggles to connect on passes shorter than 10 yards (54.2% last year and 57.9% in 2007 - league average is 67%). Anderson also helped the team win 10 games in 2007 before the implosion that was 2008.
If I haven’t written about it here before, I’ve thought about it and commented on cleveland.com - I’m wary of using completion percentage as a gauge of a quarterback’s performance. Not only can connecting on longer passes offset incompletions on short passes (the simple math: 1-3 for 40 yards vs. 2-3 for 15 yards), the difference between what Anderson actually completed in 2007 and what he would have completed had he thrown at 65% is pretty small - 2.8 completions per game (he averaged 32.9 attempts per game that year). The difference between Anderson’s percentage and the average - 60% - is even smaller: 1.1 completions per game.
Additionally, that same 2007 season Anderson led the NFL in yards per completion with 12.7 and was very good at yards per attempt with 7.2 (Tom Brady led the league at 8.3).
Yards per attempt is the key Anderson statistic, really - he’s beating BQE in the pre-season on this number as well. It’s the only number he’s ahead on.
What you’ve probably come to think at this point is that I’m trying to defend Anderson. Yes, I sort of am, but only because I think we tend to remember the interception he threw in the 2007 Cincinnati game - one play - above everything else he accomplished that season. 2008 I’m willing to write off the face of the earth due to the debacle that was the Romeo Crennel coaching program, which was only aided and abetted by the calamity of Kellen Winslow and Braylon Edwards - when sh*t started to go bad last season, there was no turning back. There was no one capable of pulling the whole thing back together.
I also don’t believe it’s fair for us to look at the pre-season and say, “well, if Edwards hadn’t dropped that pass in the Lions game, Quinn would’ve had another TD instead of another INT” and not acknowledge that Braylon dropped more passes than anyone else in the NFL last year, the majority of which were thrown by DA.
But really, the previous paragraphs only make one thing clear - we know a lot more about Anderson at this point than we do about Quinn.
Well, we do know he likes Bret Michaels. And…
We also know he voted for John McCain.
Aside from that, we don’t have much of a platform from which we can empirically discuss Quinn’s attributes. And simple stats are not great indicators in football because of the complexity of the game. They’re especially noisy in the pre-season, where they encapsulate a very small sample size and are jumbled by the level of competition, e.g. the Titans played their starters through the first half, the Browns into the fourth quarter, and broken situations and rhythms (Quinn and Anderson being shuffled in and out).
So let’s forget the stats. Let’s talk about the different offensive dynamics each quarterback provides.
I am not Eric Mangini. He also knows a lot more about football than I do, but as an outside observer, I can see the quarterback decision potentially coming down to what type of offense Mangini wants to play: does he want to concentrate on the big play or do he want long drives that burn clock?
The first scenario, obviously, means Anderson - the second means Quinn.
I have to wonder…if Braylon Edwards is the Browns’ best weapon on offense, and Anderson can utilize him better than Quinn, do you effectively limit your offense by making Quinn the quarterback?
It’s an interesting conversation, and one that’s also directly tied to the quality of the Browns defense as well as how Mangini sees the future of the team. I’ll write a little more about these issues later in the week - we’ve got time, after all, it’s not like Mangini is ever anxious to make information known.
