How the rest of the NFL lives
In Cleveland, QB issues a recurring theme
So it will be backup-to-thebackup Jacoby Brissett doing the quarterbacking for the Patriots against the Texans on Thursday night at Gillette Stadium.
As for Week 4, against the Bills, maybe it’ll be another dose of Brissett.
Or maybe a shot-up Jimmy Garoppolo. Julian Edelman, anyone? Steve Grogan? Perhaps a Hasselbeck to be named later?
This is what it’s like to live illogically in a National Football League outpost where fans go to bed hungry, and crazy, for a quarterback. Each new day brings a new theory, a new possibility, a new rumor. A new guy. He might be an untested kid you vaguely remember from training camp. He might be a reclamation project from another team’s compost heap. You wait. You hope.
The good news for Patriots fans is that what they are experiencing this week is merely a visit to What It’s Like Pretty Much Everywhere Else. Only two more games remain on Tom Brady’s Deflategate sentence, and then it’s off to the shores of Lake Erie for the big Oct. 9 showdown against Cleveland.
And speaking of the Browns . . .
What you are experiencing this week, Patriots fans, is a way of life for the good people of Cleveland. The Browns begin each new season with a new quarterback and a fresh new round of optimism, but, alas, too often the optimism is smothered by yet another injury, mishap or flat-out bad play.
And the Browns are outdoing themselves this year: When they travel to Miami on Sunday to play the Dolphins, they will start their third quarterback in as many games. In Week 1 it was Robert Griffin III. He landed on IR with a shoulder injury. This past Sunday it was Josh McCown. He injured shoulder during the Browns’ 25-20 loss to Baltimore. The latest Next Man Up is Cody Kessler, a rookie out of USC.
It’s as though some weird throwing plague is hovering over the air in Cleveland: With the baseball playoffs just around the corner, Indians manager Terry Francona has suddenly lost starters Danny Salazar (forearm strain) and Carlos Carrasco (fractured finger).
Yet this is nothing new for the Browns. For some shocking perspective let’s turn the clock all the way back to 1993, which, interestingly, is when rookie Drew Bledsoe began a stretch of nine seasons as the Patriots’ Opening Day starter.
As even a casual football fan knows, Pats coach Bill Belichick coached the Original Cleveland Browns for five years. And as most people know, he rubbed a ton of people the wrong way when, early in the ’93 season, he benched Bernie Kosar, who grew up about an hour-and-ahalf from Cleveland in Boardman Township, Ohio, in favor of Vinny Testaverde.
How bad did it get for Belichick?
“This is the ultimate power play by a coach whom some Browns players call ‘ The Little Man’ behind his back,” wrote Bill Livingston of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “I don’t know if he knows about it. (Oops, he does now.) But it’s perfect for his Napoleonic conception of himself.” Ouch. These things are cyclical, of course. Testaverde promptly passed the Browns to two straight victories, inspiring the Plain Dealer’s Tony Grossi to applaud Belichick for his “Midas” touch.
“Rather than reinvent Testaverde,” Grossi wrote, “Belichick has redefined him. It’s analagous to a fireballing pitcher who can’t make it through five innings. He goes to the bullpen and extends his career five years.”
Testaverde would go on to quarterback the Browns for most of the next three seasons. He — and Belichick — even led the Browns to a playoff win over the Bill Parcells-Bledsoe Patriots in ’ 94. But the Original Browns wound up moving to Baltimore and being reborn as the Ravens. Belichick was fired. When the Expansion Browns were hatched in 1999, it was as though quarterbacking the Browns was akin to Superman trying to throw Kryptonite.
An eye-popping 30 different quarterbacks have started games for the Browns (both editions) since Bledsoe’s first game with the Patriots. Some of them hung around for a while: Tim Couch started 59 games over a five-year period. Others, such as journeyman Thad Lewis, who started one game in 2012, are less well known.
Luke McCown is a former fourth-round pick who started four games in 2004, the beginning of what would be a journeyman career that has seen him suit up for the Bucs, Jags, Falcons and Saints. He’s the older brother of the aforementioned Josh McCown, who started Sunday.
In 2008, the Browns had four different starting quarterbacks: Derek Anderson, Brady Quinn, Ken Dorsey and Bruce Gradkowski. (Until Garoppolo started against the Dolphins on Sunday, the Pats had used four different starting quarterbacks since 1994: Bledsoe, Brady, Matt Cassel and Scott Zolak.)
Jake Delhomme, the Carolina Panthers quarterback against the Patriots in Super Bowl XXXVIII, was named the Browns starting quarterback in 2010. He suffered a sprained ankle in Week 1, missed most of the season, and later made one relief appearance with Houston in 2011 before calling it quits.
Johnny Manziel was a firstround pick in 2014 who threw out a first pitch for the Indians before he ever threw a pass for the Browns. He played just 15 games for the Browns, eight of them starts, before drifting away. His story, for the lack of any other way to put it, is tragic.
The Browns have used four first-round picks on quarterbacks since 1999 (Manziel, Couch, Quinn and Brandon Weeden). None of them is still on the roster.
The list goes on . . and on . . . and on.
For a week or two, we are Cleveland. And then Brady will return, and then Garoppolo will be healthy, and our big quarterback dilemma will be about which one the Patriots should keep.