Displaced Cleveland Fan

Another week. Another loss. This time it was a 24-point beating at the hands of Chicago which lost by 35 the previous week against Cincinnati. The Browns are terrible. If not for a botched punt return by Buffalo, they would be 0-8 right now.

Coach Eric Mangini has stubbornly stuck with QB Derek Anderson, despite four straight awful starts. Coming into this game, Anderson had a league-worst QB rating of 40.6. His 10.5 rating today won’t help. Against the Bears he was 6 for 17 (35%) for 76 yards and 2 interceptions. What’s funny, in a sad sort of way, is that the Bears returned the 2 interceptions for a total of 56 yards - just 20 less than Anderson’s total on 6 completions to Browns receivers.
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The title of the recap over at ESPN says it all - Rodgers, Pack bully Browns in warm-up for Favre, Vikings.

That’s all the Browns are anymore. They are a warm-up. A game against the Browns for a 3-2 Green Bay team amounts to nothing more than an exhibition game, or a scrimmage in practice. The Browns are awful. Plain and simple.
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OK. No one expected the Browns to beat the Steelers. I don’t know if anyone even thought it would be close.

But here’s the thing - Pittsburgh did not play their best game today. They made some mistakes. If the Browns had a decent team, they might have been able to capitalize on one or two, eliminate a couple of their own, and maybe pull out a win. But no. This Browns team is far from being a decent team.
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In a thrilling shoot-out, Derek Anderson led the high-powered Browns offense over the Buffalo Bills in a game for the ages.

OK. That’s not exactly what happened. Not at all. Actually, the only part that’s right is that the Browns won.

Yes. Really. The Browns managed to beat another team in an actual game.

It’s not like they didn’t try to lose the game. Buffalo just wouldn’t take it. Then it looked like they would play for the tie, but the Bills would have none of that. A fumble on a punt return gave the Browns the ball back at Buffalo’s 16 yard line. Even Cleveland couldn’t blow this chance. They couldn’t get in the end zone. But the Browns did manage to kick a field goal for the 6-3 win.
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Following the Brady Quinn era that lasted a whole 10 quarters, the Browns played their first full game of the new Derek Anderson era against the Bengals.

I freely admit that I am a Brady Quinn supporter over Derek Anderson. I think he has the potential to be a better long-term solution, despite his terrible start to this season. Anderson is a solid guy to have as a backup QB, but as a starter will likely remain somewhere between average and mediocre.

That being said, DA did have a better game today than BQ has this season. The Browns came close to winning this game, going into overtime. But in overtime, they had three chances on offense to win the game, and all three times they had to punt. Unfortunately the defense couldn’t hold on for a tie and the Bengals kicked a field goal with 7 seconds left for a 23-20 win.

There were some positives in this game though:
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Somebody please, make it stop!

Just in case you were tempted to think that the Browns season couldn’t get any worse in week 3, here it is. See that picture? That’s Derek Anderson. Remember him? Sure you do. And look what he’s wearing. A helmet. You know why? He played today. No joke. What happened to Brady Quinn? Mangini benched him in favor of Anderson. Yeah, you read that right.
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I was out for a few hours this afternoon and this evening. I left right after this game started. When I got home and saw the score, I thought to myself, “it’s probably good that I wasn’t home following this game.”

Last week the Browns lost to the Vikings by 14 points. The Vikings are a good team on both sides of the ball. On the other side, you have the Broncos beating the Cincinnati Bengals last week on a fluke play in the final seconds. This game should have been close. It wasn’t.
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