Editor's note: Tony Grossi covers the Cleveland Browns for ESPN 850 WKNR.

San Francisco -- Derek Anderson said he is in a better place now – personally and professionally – and is able to say he is sorry.

The former Cleveland Browns quarterback is sorry about the way he exited after the 2009 season, when he slammed Browns fans as “ruthless” and wrote in a scathing email that “they don’t deserve a winner.”

He’s even more sorry about his performance in the defining game of his Browns career -- a 19-14 loss in Cincinnati in Game 15 in the 2007 season that cost the Browns a playoff berth and division championship.

On a blustery December day, Anderson threw two interceptions on successive throws just before halftime to pretty much seal the fate of the season. The Browns haven’t come close to the post-season since.

As Anderson recounted his highs and lows in Cleveland while on the precipice of Super Bowl 50 as Cam Newton’s backup with the Carolina Panthers, he revealed just how deeply that game affected him.

“I had the opportunity to take my team to the playoffs and it was one of the worst games I ever played,” Anderson told me on Thursday at the Panthers’ Super Bowl headquarters hotel in San Jose, CA.

That game was eight years ago. Anderson is now the backup quarterback on a 17-1 juggernaut favored to beat the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl 50. And that game still is on his mind. It shattered his confidence.

He got beat up two more years in Cleveland, physically and mentally, and then one year in Arizona. And then it wasn’t until his fourth year with Carolina, that Anderson exorcised the demons of that Browns’ game almost seven years earlier.

Anderson filled in for an injured Newton in the Panthers’ 2014 season opener and threw for two touchdowns in a 20-14 win over Tampa Bay.

“I looked at it as an opportunity to prove myself,” Anderson told me. “I know I was a lot better than [in that 2007 loss to Cincinnati]. When we got over that [win against Tampa Bay], it was refreshing. It proved I could still play a clean game at a level I know I was capable of.”

Soul searching: In 2007, Anderson produced the best season of a Browns quarterback since the team was reborn in expansion in 1999. He won 10 of 15 starts, threw for 3,787 yards and 29 touchdowns. The big year earned contract extensions for him, offensive coordinator Rob Chudzinski, coach Romeo Crennel and general manager Phil Savage.

And things just unraveled from there. Anderson went 3-6 in 2008 as the Browns slumped to 4-12, and the Crennel-Chudzinsk partnership was blown up by owner Randy Lerner. After a 3-4 stint under new coach Eric Mangini in 2009, Mike Holmgren was brought in as president and Anderson was released.

It was a terrible time for him, and he now says he couldn’t deal with everything swirling around him.

“I signed a $24 million deal [after 2007] and nobody stood by me,” Anderson said. “The first bad game that I had, every single one of you [in the media] were saying, ‘We need Brady Quinn in there.’

“I do regret saying some of the things I did say because I do have great friends there. I was definitely sour about the way I was treated by the organization and the fans. I had every opportunity to leave after ’07 and I chose not to. I had great rapport with my teammates and I felt I owed it to them to come back. I thought we could do something special.”

Underlying his problems on the field were problems off the field.

“The last year I was there, I was going through a divorce,” Anderson said. “I wasn’t doing the right things I needed to do personally, which made football harder than it had it to be. I was depressed. I wasn’t in a good spot.”

The career refresher: The 2010 season in Arizona, Anderson said, was the lowest point. He suffered another bad year and was beat up physically. So when Chudzinski moved on to Carolina offensive coordinator in 2011 and lured Anderson to join him, Anderson jumped at the chance.

“At that point, I just needed some guidance,” he said. “Chud said, ‘Let’s get you back playing good football.’ He wanted me to push Cam but also to help in his development. At that point, I wanted to be around people that could make me better, that I could trust and be comfortable with.”

Anderson remarried in 2013, had a daughter and is expecting another one in April. Despite his messy parting from Cleveland, and all the negativity he abhors from years of losing , he wanted to return when Chudzinski was hired as head coach in 2013.

“I wanted to prove what I did there [in 2007] wasn’t [a fluke],” Anderson said, “and I was strong enough to go back and take on that role and be a leader and help.

“To me, I felt I had unfinished business and I wasn’t given the opportunity [to complete it]. I’ve lost the animosity over the whole thing and I feel bad for what those people have gone through. It’s so frustrating to me, because I see that [negative] mindset all the time.”

Anderson said he invited some friends from Cleveland to the Panthers’ first playoff game and he was struck by how much they enjoyed the experience of winning.

“I wanted them to have that experience [in Cleveland] and I wish I was the one who could have brought that off,” he said.

All is good now for him now. He is 32, much more mature professionally, and his life is together, and he is totally at peace with the thought of being one play away from playing in the Super Bowl.

“I’m light years beyond where I was mentally the last time we talked [in 2009],” Anderson said. “The way I approach things, my off the field personal life, all those things are so much better. I’m grown up. When I got here Sunday, I sat in my room and just thought about how far I’ve come as a man, and in football, too. Football becomes easier for me when I have a clear mind.”