Brandon Weeden, oh the horror…

Uh oh…

I didn’t want to write about that Brandon Weeden situation yesterday. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if what I had witnessed had actually happened. I’ve watched a lot of football, and that was as remarkable a QB performance as I have ever seen at the professional level. It was as if you placed someone that had never played the sport of football and placed them in a game at the highest level. Weeden made errors in every phase of the game, and looked overwhelmed while doing it. It’s not often you watch a game and think to yourself, “That guy reminds me of Spergon Wynn, but just not as good”.

I think of the 2012 Browns season like they were a fella taking a brand new girlfriend on a cruise. She seems really great. She’s really pretty from far away. It seems like it’s going to be a really fun time. Then the cruise actually starts and she’s not who you thought she was. On the first night at sea, she gets wasted, blows the First Mate, starts a fight with you, and then throws up in your room. The bad news is that you have 15 more days on the ship with her, and there is no turning back.

It’s quite a situation, isn’t it? The Browns are All In on Weeden. Make no mistake. They are going to keep playing this guy until it turns out he is serviceable, or his spine is broken while trying to make a tackle after throwing an interception. Either one, and they probably don’t care which at this point. All I know is this. When you draft a guy #1, you are playing that guy no matter what. No one in the organization wants to step up to a podium and say, “Wow! Did we miss on this guy! I dunno. He looked good on tape, but it turns out he just can’t play in the NFL. Does anyone here know anyone they think might be good? Someone have a cousin or something? Frankly, we are just fresh out of ideas.”

This week against the Bengals was originally looking like “Two Kinda Crappy Teams From Ohio Play Almost Meaningless Game”. Now for the Browns it has become “The Most Important Game In The World”. Can you imagine how worked up the Rubes in the rubber dog masks will get if Weeden goes out and has a game like 12-34 with 132 yards and 3 INTS? Colt McCoy starts to look like Steve Young all the sudden. The front office has to come up with some kind of spin. Weeden has to pepper the postgame interviews with comments about “slowing the game down” and “getting back to basics”. It’s all bad for the Browns if that happens.

Weeden doesn’t even have to do that much to cool the flames. I think he has to step out on Sunday, and have a game along the lines of 16-26 for 225 yards, 1 TD and 2 INTs. That won’t put him in Hall of Fame contention, but at least he can breathe for a week. I think we can all agree, the Browns expectations are not that Brandon Weeden will be the cornerstone of the franchise and an All Pro for the next decade. They just want a middle of the pack QB for the next five years. I think if they can have a QB lumped in with Sam Bradford, Ryan Fitzpatrick or Matt Cassel everyone would be happy at this point. It sure doesn’t look possible after week one.

There are always plenty of interesting story lines in the NFL. For my money, what happens to Brandon Weeden this week is the best. The Browns may still suck in 2012, but for at least this week, they are interesting.

Dust off that Colt McCoy jersey. You just might need it again.

-Greg Miller

Be sure to check out more insensitive stuff written by Greg Miller at http://nursethehate.blogspot.com/

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