FanHouse BradyQuinn

You really do have to feel kind of bad for Browns fans. Here's a group of people that were among the most loyal fans in football (and, truthfully, they still are) only to have their team ripped away from them in 1995 and taken to Baltimore where they won a Super Bowl five years later.

After patiently waiting for three years, Cleveland was given its team back in 1999, and this is what they were rewarded with: absolute chaos. And losing. A lot of losing.

On Sunday, the Browns were obliterated on their home turf, 31-3, by the Green Bay Packers and the fans in attendance decided to take that opportunity to amuse themselves in unique and hilarious ways.

This is what Brian Billick had in mind when he traded back into the first round of the 2003 draft to take Kyle Boller: the next Peyton Manning.

Of course, Manning never winged a football through goal posts from midfield while on one knee, which I imagine made Boller an even more attractive prospect in Billick's mind. Whatever, neither Boller nor Billick worked out in Baltimore and now one is the backup quarterback for the Rams and the other is an in-booth NFL analyst for Fox.

St. Louis will face Manning and the Colts this week, and Boller, for the first time in his career, looks like a Pro Bowl quarterback. Via the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

I have to admit, I'm not much of a wrestling fan, so the only thing I know about the WWE performer who goes by "The Miz" is that he was a cast member on MTV's The Real World during its New York season, as well as various other "reality" shows. Apparently, he's also a Cleveland Browns fan and isn't all that excited about the job first-year head coach Eric Mangini is doing.

During a chat with ESPN.com's Jon Robinson earlier this week, The Miz decided to weigh in on the current situation in Cleveland, and as it turns out, everybody sucks, and he wants to forcefully make Mangini poop his pants.

How's that for a mental image?

I'm blaming the McCain-Palin ticket. Prior to Brady Quinn taking a political stance last fall, his career was moving along. Nothing spectacular, but modest improvements, and he had even earned the starting gig midway through last season ... only to land on injured reserve a few weeks later.

And after a coaching shake-up, Quinn again won the job, this time out of training camp, only to lose it following three atrocious performances. (He was so bad that head coach Eric Mangini wills stick with Derek Anderson after last week's 2 of 17 for 23 yards effort against the lowly Bills.)

Relatively speaking, it was a good week for Brady Quinn. He didn't spend Sunday afternoon getting body slammed, and for the first time all season, he wasn't primarily responsible for the Browns losing.

Of course, you can't expect Quinn to make it from one Sunday to the next without getting clowned at least once. Which is exactly what happened last Thursday as he took in show at the Cleveland House of Blues. Via the Cleveland Plain-Dealer (via Dawg Pound Daily, FanSided and WL):

The big mess that is Cleveland Browns is the first subject of business for our latest NFL Twitter mailbag, where we explore the decision to bench Brady Quinn and what it tells us, in hindsight, about Quinn dropping in the 2007 NFL draft. We also look at Eric Mangini, who looks through three games like one of the worst head-coaching hires in modern NFL history.

We then switch gears to talk about a couple of Twitter issues: Terrell Owens taking to Twitter to rip Rodney Harrison, and David Clowney getting benched for tweeting about his playing time. Your questions and comments, and my responses, are below.

It didn't take a miracle this week, but the Broncos won all the same.

The Broncos moved to 2-0 with a 27-6 victory against the hapless Cleveland Browns on Sunday afternoon, and they did it behind a defense that continues to bear no resemblance to the ones that made Mile High Stadium a fairly innocuous place to visit over the last two seasons. Elvis Dumervil's four sacks of Brady Quinn led the effort, and his strip of Quinn on the first Browns drive of the second half helped a 10-6 game become a rout.

The Browns converted just 3 of 14 third downs, gained only 200 yards overall and, generally, looked like they had no answer to the newly-frisky Broncos 3-4 scheme.

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Eric Mangini has already informed his quarterbacks of the state of the Brown Nation (read: who's gonna start against the Vikings), the Associated Press reported. Yet, for whatever reason, he's still keeping that information a secret from the general public.

I understand the rationale behind why Mangini doesn't want to alert the public -- if you have two good players at one position who feature different styles of play and you can't decide who is going to start, hell yeah you should keep your decision a secret.

It's precisely the move that Bill Belichick is notorious for; hence Mangini's footstep-following personnel maneuver. But, frankly, what's the freaking point here?

Byron Leftwich will be the starting quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, coach Raheem Morris has informed his team. Leftwich beat out Luke McCown in one of the least inspiring QB battles in recent memory, and will direct a Tampa Bay team of which little is expected through a likely rebuilding season.

Morris' decision leaves only two NFL teams -- the Cleveland Browns and the Detroit Lions -- undecided about their starting quarterbacks as the third week of the preseason hits its climax. (That is, unless you count the Patriots.) Daunte Culpepper gets the start for Detroit this afternoon against the Colts and at this point looks like the favorite to open the season as the Lions' starter over rookie Matthew Stafford. Meanwhile, true to frustrating form, Browns coach Eric Mangini isn't saying who will start tonight's game against the Titans, though the thought in Cleveland seems to be that a decision will be made today on whether Brady Quinn or Derek Anderson will be the regular-season starter.

Cut-N-Go is Fantasy Football FanHouse's daily gathering of links from around the web, covering the goings-on in NFL Training Camp which have an impact on fantasy value.

'Tis the season for the NFL to have breaking news almost every other day it seems. Thankfully, for Plaxico Burress, maybe - just maybe - the whole Brett Favre lovefest in Minnesota will overshadow him on this dark day. OK, who are we kidding? His story is sure to trump most anything for the next few weeks. The same Plaxico Burress who caught the winning touchdown from Eli Manning in the Super Bowl is going to prison for two years.

Yup, the same Plaxico who we used to draft on a regular basis in fantasy football is now rendered useless. And thus let's cue up the "who is gonna take Plaxico" jokes for our fantasy drafts. Shameful. This certainly leaves one to ponder if this is it for another once promising Michigan State WR. Bottom line, don't draft Plaxico.

Now, what happened around the camps, because isn't that what's most important?