Charlie Frye is nothing if not gutsy. Playing with a broken deeply bruised wrist — on his throwing hand, no less — Frye courageously stepped into the great fire of Reliant Stadium to face the mighty Houston Texans, a team that promptly reminded everyone — Frye, the coaches, the fans — just why the Browns seem so distant from the good light of the playoffs. Final score: 14-6.
QB Score: -5
QB Score per play: -.13
If you look here you will see the QB Scores for all qualifying NFL quarterbacks this season through week 16. What immediately stands out is the relative strength of the starting quarterbacks of this year’s playoff teams. Only Matt Hasselback, Eli Manning, and Rex Grossman have performed below average. Hasselback, of course, was injured for part of the season and Manning is guiding a sinking ship. Grossman is the only one of these quarterbacks that objectively stinks, in other words. In football isolating individual performances from the team is exceedingly difficult to do, so don’t read these QB Scores as absolute evidence that if tomorrow the Browns went out and signed Peyton Manning the team would suddenly go 11-5. But it is difficult to ignore the influence a quarterback can have on a team (see: Tom Brady) and to think that there is no relationship between the quality of a quarterback and a team’s chances of winning is overly optimistic (at least in the case of Browns fans who think that Frye’s is the arm to lead the team back to the postseason).
Here are the cumulative QB Scores for this season:
Frye
QB Score: -244
QB Score per play: -.51
Anderson
QB Score: -60
QB Score per play: -.47
Anderson played far less than Frye and the status of his shoulder is still uncertain, but based on their play this season there is no reason to support appointing Frye outright as the starting quarterback next season. Assuming Anderson is ready to go next preseason and no other quarterback in camp is a viable option as the starter, there ought to be an epic battle for the starting job between Frye and Anderson.
Of course, if Anderson and Frye are the only two quarterbacks in camp next year with a shot at earning the starting job then the Browns will have huge problems. After replacing significant portions of the coaching staff the next aim needs to be finding a quarterback. In the comments section of this blog there has been a fair amount of discussion going on concerning who the Browns need to bring in.
One name that I haven’t thought of since last year but who now looks like a fairly reasonable possibility is Matt Schaub of the Atlanta Falcons. Schaub is a restricted free agent this season and will become an unrestricted free agent after next season. With all the changes going on in Atlanta and with Mike Vick under contract for 10 billion dollars over 59 years Schaub would definitely leave as a free agent in 2008 — he is really good and some team will offer him starter’s money — so the Falcons will probably be actively seeking a deal this off season. Early indications seem to favor a trade with Oakland: Randy Moss for Matt Schaub. This trade would allow Oakland to select Calvin Johnson to replace Moss. One columnist thinks Atlanta should trade Schaub and ATL’s first and second round picks to either Detroit or Oakland for either team’s first draft pick and then use that top pick to select Johnson. This would be better than the Moss-for-Johnson deal for the Falcons by a wide margin, so let’s follow this trade rumor out a bit and see if it could lead to Cleveland.
Brady Quinn will be one of the first two draft picks, so that eliminates one of Oakland or Detroit from the Schaub trade. If the remaining team decides that, say, Joe Thomas is too good a prospect to turn down (and after today’s bowl game Thomas certainly looks better than advertised), which is entirely possible, then the Browns may very well be in the ideal position to step into this trade. Atlanta would still get Johnson, only at a cheaper price, which would satisfying them I am sure. The Browns would get a really good quarterback and an additional second-round pick, which this season looks like an incredibly enticing possibility. With the depth in the 2007 draft class sliding down to the middle of the first round wouldn’t necessarily preclude the Browns from getting an elite player, and with an additional second round pick the Browns could always role that into a higher draft choice, essentially trading down to #1o and then trading back up to #7, which would mean that the Browns would get a starting quarterback by giving up five spots in an incredibly deep draft. This would be a really, really, really big win were it to happen.
The potential foil is Tampa Bay. The Bucs are not in the market for a starting quarterback, having just resigned Chris Simms. But the Bucs are in the market for a wide receiver, meaning that a trade with Atlanta is highly unlikely. And if Johnson is off the board when the Browns draft then Schaub is probably off the trading block as well (at least as far as draft-day trades are concerned). So winning that damn coin flip could be a huge deal after all.
