Posts tagged Brady Quinn at FanHouse

Patriots vice president Scott Pioli is taking his sweet time getting back to the Browns about that GM job. Despite reports that Pioli had to make a decision last Thursday or the deal was off, the Browns are still interested in the guy who played a very big role in assembling those New England rosters that won three Super Bowls earlier this decade.

So now Cleveland waits. Pioli still has to meet with the Chiefs, and depending on how it plays out, Browns owner Randy Lerner could opt to hire a head coach and worry about finding a general manager later. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer's Mary Kay Cabot, Eric Mangini is the early favorite, although other names are also in the mix.

Two other head coaching candidates -- fired Broncos coach Mike Shanahan and Titans defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz -- are on the backburner for now. Shanahan was contacted by the Browns, but told them he will be on vacation with his family for the next two weeks and will not interview during that time, a source said.

If the Browns haven't hired a coach by then, they might still reach out to him.

If the Browns haven't hired a coach by then, their fans will have already burned down the city.

Most Browns fans gave up on the 2008 season in late fall and have equally divided their time these last three months between pining for Brady Quinn and Anybody But Romeo. Bill Cowher would be the obvious choice to replace Crennel, but the former Steelers coach-turned-CBS-teevee-personality claims he's quite content to spend his weekends with Dan, Sterling and Boomer, and the rest of the week following his girls' basketball careers.

Plus, who knows, maybe Romeo Crennel can sweet talk his way into keeping his job.

Seems unlikely given the preseason hype followed by the 4-11 record. If nothing else, though, Crennel has been granted an audience with owner Randy Lerner sometime next week, which, if nothing else, guarantees he won't be fired before the team gets on the bus to make the 120-mile trip from Pittsburgh to Cleveland.

So what does Crennel say to save his job? Other than holding Lerner at gunpoint to get assurances (and that hasn't yet been ruled out), Romeo plans to point to the team's successes. Should be a short meeting.

There are just a few rules to "Browns Fight Club."

1.) You do not talk about "Browns Fight Club."
2.) You do not talk about "Browns Fight Club."

After rumors leaved to the always great Pro Football Talk yesterday about a Brady Quinn and Shaun Smith altercation inside Cleveland camp, head coach Romeo Crennel came out today and played by the rules.

"If it happened, we're keeping it in house," Crennel said.

Talk about a clubhouse gone to hell in a hand basket. Cleveland is now a putrid 4-11 after getting shut out by the Bengals on Sunday and have rumors of Skip Bayless' boy toy getting roughed up by a 325 pound defensive end.

What were these two even talking about? An injured quarterback having words with an inactive defensive player that was called out as quitting on the team a month ago? Strange.

The Channel 3 report said that Smith and Quinn also had a verbal confrontation.

Crennel made it clear that "in a family you always have some disagreements.''

I'm not a psychologist by any stretch of the imagination, but calling the Browns a "family" at this point would be like calling Charles Manson a good babysitter. Not exactly the term you might be searching for.

The Browns face the Steelers next week in the last game of the regular season, so I sure hope this fight news doesn't affect their chemistry and keep them out of the playoffs.

Romeo Crennel will be a free man in six days. And if yesterday's emotionless post-game presser is any indication, he's already accepted his fate. For the sake of professionalism, however, Crennel will feign interest as the Browns prepare for the Steelers in a meaningless Week 17 affair.

Cleveland, 4-11 and fresh off getting shutout courtesy of the mighty Bengals, will face a Pittsburgh team that has already wrapped up a first-round bye. And while the Steelers will probably play backups for most of the afternoon, the Browns have nothing to lose by playing their starters. The ones left standing, anyway.

Tight end Kellen Winslow has missed three games with a high ankle sprain and the quarterback position has been FUBAR for some time. Derek Anderson was benched for Brady Quinn, who promptly broke a bone in his hand and landed on injured reserve. Anderson then blew up his knee, and now third-teamer Ken Dorsey looks iffy for the Sunday finale. Which means more Bruce Gradkowski for everybody!

We're heading into Week 15, the Browns have already lost nine times, and head coach Romeo Crennel has pretty much guaranteed that he won't be back after the season. But with three games left on the schedule, he's still -- to borrow a phrase -- playing to win the games.

You see, it only took three-and-a-half months to figure out that maybe Cleveland's sputtering offense could use more Joshua Cribbs and less everybody else.

Browns coach Romeo Crennel said the Browns will use Josh Cribbs more to try to jump-start the offense.

"It looked like Cribbs was a spark, and so I think that we'll have to give him a chance to be more of a spark and try to manage his other duties as well," said Crennel. "That's what I think we can do there."

Spoken with all the conviction of a temporary worker nearing the end of his contract. Why Crennel didn't hatch this plan back in October, when the Browns were beginning their descent to awfulness, is a mystery, and one he'll probably have plenty of time to contemplate in the coming weeks.

I don't think anybody in the Browns organization would care much if commissioner Roger Goodell just announced that he was canceling the rest of the season. The last three months have been an unmitigated disaster in Cleveland, and the sooner we can put it in the rearview, the better.

Unfortunately, it looks like they'll be required to play out their schedule, which means four more weeks of utter ineptitude and disappointment. Silver lining: fans won't be able to blame Derek Anderson because he's out with a knee injury. And with Brady Quinn also on the shelf with a boo-boo on his throwing hand, Ken Dorsey is now burdened with the job over the next four weeks.

Head coach Romeo Crennel is understandably underwhelmed by the prospect.

"He's a very smart quarterback and he's a competitor," Coach Romeo Crennel said. "He probably doesn't have some of the physical skills some other quarterbacks in the NFL have. I think that's probably been the biggest drawback."

Which is the NFL equivalent of saying Dorsey has a great personality. To be fair, it's not like the former University of Miami quarterback has had the benefit of playing on an NFL team that wasn't completely unwatchable. As the News-Herald's Jeff Schudel rightly points out, "Whenever Ken Dorsey has had the opportunity to start an NFL game, he has had the misfortune of stepping into a difficult situation surrounded by teammates who are underperforming or not very good."

Truer words, Jeff, truer words. Still, I don't expect the remaining teams on Cleveland's schedule to give Dorsey a break because of his unbelievably crappy luck. But the Browns are 4-8, so, really, who cares.

The last time Browns fans cheered their starting quarterback going down with an injury the team went to the playoffs. It was 2002, and then-face of the franchise Tim Couch was in the process of getting "Wally Pipped" by Kelly Holcomb. History repeated itself on Sunday, except this time, there will be no postseason. Just a bunch of guys limping through the final month of the season.

Yesterday, some fans at Cleveland Browns Stadium happily voiced their pleasure after Derek Anderson crumpled to the turf and suffered what looks like a season-ending knee injury. Predictably, neither Anderson nor his teammates were impressed.

The final four games of this season were supposed to serve as an audition of sorts for Derek Anderson, the Browns quarterback who came out of nowhere in 2007 to lead the team to 10 wins before getting benched earlier this month.

Brady Quinn, Cleveland's latest submission for franchise quarterback, was shut down for the year after doing more damage to the broken index finger on his throwing hand during the Week 12 loss to the Texans, which opened the door for Anderson to get another shot at the gig.

This is from a few days ago, but it still merits a mention because it's about the Browns' tenuous front-office situation. In recent weeks, both general manager Phil Savage and head coach Romeo Crennel have come under fire for varying displays of incompetence.

On Wednesday, Savage, making his weekly radio appearance, proceeded to make the case that ... well, I'm not quite sure where he was going. He came off sounding like someone trying to save his job at the expense of Crennel's. It's not as scandalous as it sounds -- they both deserve to get canned -- but it's odd, nonetheless.

''I've said it on this program a number of times,'' Savage said. ''Hey, my responsibility is the 53-man roster, and then it's Romeo and the rest of the coaching staff's decision how to utilize the 45 players that are dressed on Sunday. Who starts. Who plays. When they're gonna play. How they're gonna be utilized.

''If I'm going to get involved in those decisions, then I may as well put a headset on and double my salary.''

Translation: I've done a swell job putting this roster together and it's not my fault if Crennel can't win with Pro Bowl-caliber talent.

With attention spans dwindling, we forego full game-by-game previews to give you the essentials you need to know about every contest this glorious NFL weekend. Click here to go back in time.

The 1s

Baltimore (7-4) at Cincinnati (1-9-1): If I asked you at the beginning of the season the following question, "Would Joe Flacco have a better year than Carson Palmer," you'd have three responses.

"Who is Joe Flacco?"

"What team does he play for?"

"Who is Joe Flacco again?"

Like most fans, I can't believe in the Ravens until they are preparing themselves for their first round playoff game. But Flacco has been better than anyone could have expected this season, and it must be nice for Ravens fans to see that. Honestly, do you think a single person in Baltimore thought before the season started that there was such a thing as a competent quarterback on their roster?

Pick: Baltimore