Cleveland Browns: QB Score: Week 5

Derek Anderson drank from the Bret Favre fountain of bad decisions before the start of the first half and those magical fluids clearly had an impact on how he played. Sure one of his interceptions was the result of a tipped ball, but even that pass wasn’t so wise to begin with and overall he was throwing the ball all over the place, just not frequently enough into his receivers’ hands.

The second half was a little different. Anderson pretty clearly moved into “game management mode” which is a mode that suits him well, especially against a New England defense that is one of the best in the league. The Browns made a comeback and the final score belies how close the game was midway through the fourth quarter. That the Browns were able to get within a score is a credit to how well the defense played and they did play quite well. New England is scary good and before Sunday the Browns’ defense was scary not so good. Maybe Sunday’s performance will give them the confidence boost they need.

A few things need to be kept in mind when thinking about how well Anderson played:

1. The game was on the road.
2. The Patriots are the best team in football, with one of the best defenses.
3. The Browns played without their starting running back for the entire game (save for the first play).

None of this makes up for the few horrendous decisions Anderson made, a few of which crippled the team’s chances of keeping pace with the Patriots in the first half. Still, things could have been much worse.

QB Score: 31
QB Score per play: .674

Cleveland Browns: QB Score: Week 4

Well that was a nice little win. It always feel good to beat your former team.

Here is a quick fact: After only four week the Browns have doubled their division win total from the previous two seasons and for at least the next three weeks the Browns will have more division wins than the Bengals. Suck on that, Cincinnati!

Derek Anderson got off to a hot start — after the first two series his QB Score per play was a Godly 16.83 — and other than the interception in the second quarter he managed the game quite well. Although the run defense is still cringe-worthy, the defense did show up in the read zone, which kept Baltimore at bay. Truthfully the game was never close. The Edwards TD catch absolutely sucked the life out of the Ravens, which is always a wonderful site. Now if only the team could figure out a way of literally sucking the life out of Art Model…

If historical data matter…

Though CC Sabathia has been in the Majors since 2001 he has only pitched against the Yankees eight times in his career and the last time he faced them was 2004. Sabathia is the expected ALDS Game 1 starter, so let’s take a look at his careers numbers against the LeBrons Yankees.

Quarterbacks worse than DA this season

Dave Berri is the co-author of The Wages of Wins, main blogger at the WoW Journal, and the mind behind the quarterback rating metric QB Score, which I use each week when discussing Derek Anderson. Yesterday Berri published the list of accumulative QB Scores through the first three weeks of the season and Derek Anderson placed a solid 13 (out of 34 qualifying quarterbacks). Here is a partial list of quarterback who in the first three games have not played as well at Anderson:

Bret Favre (17)
Eli Manning (19)
Vince Young (20)
Philip Rivers (26)
Alex Smith (28)
Drew Brees (33)
Rex Grossman (34)

Now for a quick note on QB Score, NFL passer rating, and why Anderson fares well in QB Score (he’s 18th in passer rating).

QB Score is superior to the NFL’s passer rating (in my opinion at least) in part because it’s far easier to calculate and in part because it takes into account what a quarterback does with his legs. The “running game” of a quarterback is important to consider not only for what it means to a quarterback like McNabb but also for what it means to someone like Derek Anderson. To keep a high passer rating you are better off taking a -20 yard sack than throwing the ball out of bounds for a 0 yard gain. These incredibly costly plays are the plays Anderson does a great job avoiding, which is going a long way in keeping his QB score inflated above others who are historically better quarterbacks. Not taking sacks is a very big deal. Anderson is good at that.

Cleveland Browns: QB Score: Week 3

Derek Anderson did not play well against the Oakland Raiders. Anderson threw the ball very poorly, often doing his best imitation of Bret Favre when Bret Favre is at his worst: firing into quadruple coverage, overthrowing receivers, and throwing the ball to the other team. Anderson was not helped by a number of dropped passes nor was he helped by a running game that was apparently didn’t board the flight to Oakland, but neither of those factors is an excuse for his play.

No, it was the baseball dirt that made all the difference.

Quick Indians notes

* “Other 54 games” record: 37-8

* Right now the only way the Indians don’t play a game in October is if they lose the rest of their games. If the Indians win one more game the Tigers would have to go undefeated in order to force a one game playoff on October 1st. That game would be played at home.

* In the last month:

• The Indians are 23-7
• The Yankees are 18-9
• The Angels are 18-12
• The Red Sox are 16-13

* In the last two series the Indians play Seattle and Kansas City. The Mariners are 12-18 in the last month and the Royals are 11-18.

* Right now the Indians have a 99.99126% chance of making the playoffs.

Cleveland Browns: QB Score: Week 2

For those who doubted that Derek Anderson had the ability to be a good Browns quarterback — you are not alone. Very few people were particularly happy to see Anderson play last week. Few people were happy that the team handed over the starting job to Anderson when Charlie Frye was traded. Few people expected Anderson to last beyond the fourth quarter of the Cincinnati game. Many people figured that Anderson was going to cough up the job to Brady Quinn inside of three quarters.

Here is what all these people need to know about Anderson: he has an NFL arm.

Will Brady Quinn help?

With Charlie Frye now out of the picture there is a strong possibility that Brady Quinn will start Sunday against the Bengals. Is there any reason to expect that starting Brady Quinn with help?

I’m not yet sure.

But while I work on an answer for that I’d like to direct your attention to something I forgot to post a few weeks ago in my post about NFL experts’ choices for how many games the Browns will win the season, which I didn’t, in fact, post. I forgot.

Football Outsiders — the Baseball Prospectus of football, made somewhat famous recently when Aaron Schatz was featured on Bill Simmons’s podcast — posted its expected win totals for all 32 teams. Here is their prediction for the Browns (note that this was in a story about over/under win totals):

ECF: Game 4: Watch out

Don’t look now but the Cavs have the Pistons on the ropes. I realize the series is tied 2-2 with only one more game to be played in Cleveland, but Detroit cannot like what has happened this series, let alone what happened in game four. The Cavs had their typical sleepwalking third quarter, allowing the Pistons to outscore them by nine, 24-15, but the Cavs outscored the Pistons in the other three quarters and after a nice outburst in the middle of the fourth quarter the game was never really close. Detroit has yet to play particularly well in the series and by now you have to chalk that up to the Cavs’ defense.

The game ball has to go to Daniel Gibson, who played inspired basketball that belied his youth and inexperience. Many Cavs fans had been waiting for Gibson to replace Hughes — or at least for Hughes to depart for the bench — but in the moments leading up to tipoff I was quite nervous about how Gibson would respond.

So quickly did we find out.

4-7 from the field, 12-12 from the line, 21 points — an extremely satisfying line from a position we’ve come to expect nothing from. Of course, we all knew Gibson could score. But Gibson played quite well against Billups, too. Sure, Chauncey scored 23 points, but he only shot 6-16 from the field, missing his final six shots, and had five turnovers. With the exception of a couple baskets Billups lived mostly on the outside, which played right into Gibson’s defensive strengths (quickness) while mitigating his own offensive advantage over Gibson (size).

The evolution of Daniel Gibson is a sight to behold.

It is worth mentioning that Hughes played valiantly in spite of his injured foot. You probably can’t overstate the importance of Hughes starting the game instead of Gibson, for it allowed Gibson to continue in his normal role off the bench and it allowed Hughes to establish the defensive tone of the game in the way he had the previous three games. I rip on Hughes a lot on this blog, but I have nothing but positive words for him after game four. Heck, I’m not even going to mention that he shot just 1-6 from the field….oops.

Drew Gooden might get overshadowed by Gibson and James, but Gooden was fantastic, making up for a lackluster series. If there were three game balls to go around he would get one.

Then there is LeBron, who might be on a vendetta after games one and two. I do not envy Tayshaun Prince.

Oh, and we are just two more Rasheed Wallace technical fouls away from a one game suspension. I doubt he’d ever pick up a technical at home, but you never know. If I were Mike Brown I would advise Varejao not to shower for the rest of the series, on the hope that his rancid Brazilian odor might drive Wallace over the edge. Hey, any advantage you can get.

As you can see LBJ was the player of the game. Gooden and Gibson were almost identically excellent. The rest of the team played poorly (except Eric Snow, but he only played one minute so he doesn’t really count). That might be just as good of a sign as Gibson playing well: some of those guys are bound to bounce back. If Gibson sticks to form then I like the team’s chances in game five.

Thank you, Mike Brown

You did it, Mike Brown. It may have taken a slight injury to get you to pull the trigger, but whatever. We don’t care how you got there, we are just celebrating that you showed up at all. So welcome to the club, Mike Brown. May you keep Larry Hughes on the bench permanently.

Here are the numbers:

As you can see, the game ball goes to LeBron. He was much more aggressive on offense, establishing early on an inside presence. His one mistake was not taking Hamilton to the block when Hamilton was guarding him, which was quite often in the fourth quarter. James ended up knocking down about three huge shots with Hamilton on him, but they were low-percentage shots. I understand that James was feeling it. That said, he could have easily punished Hamilton down low.

Sasha Pavlovic finally stepped up, grabbing his first rebound of the series in addition to his first assist. He finished with five assists and a number of critical field goals. Lest it go unnoticed, Pavlovic played outstanding defense, too.

The biggest news of the night had to be Daniel Gibson. He played outstanding basketball, taking and making a couple big shots late int he game. He also came up huge defensively (the official stats as of 11pm CST do not credit Gibson with any steals, which is a mistake; his WS should be higher). His strip against Prince was about as big a defensive play as there was all game. It’s probably a poor strategy to have Gibson switch on pick and rolls — Prince has almost a foot advantage over Gibson to compliment a nice low-post game — but my guess is that Mike Brown was not planning on playing Gibson during crunch time and this will be fixed before game 4.

Speaking of which, kudos to Brown for playing Gibson and double kudos for benching Hughes. Hughes hurting his foot might be the best thing to happen to the Cavs this series. Interestingly, the TNT crew reported during the game that Hughes was able to play and that Brown elected to stick with Gibson. So triple kudos to Brown for making the smart basketball move. A lot of us had wondered if you had it in you. I guess you do.