52 52 52 Week #10: Delaware

In which I examine crappy local sports journalism on a state-by-state basis, progressing through the states in terms of an alphabetical ordering of the heights of their tallest points. Because I can.

I think it's fair to say that Delaware has a reputation for being a bit, you know, boring. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that reputation is pretty much completely deserved. I mean, I live pretty near the state, and damned if I could ever work out anything fun to do there. Of course, I'm not a beach person, and I guess Delaware has beaches. I guess.

Of course, there's always the chance Delaware's highpoint will redeem the boring lower elevations of the state. It's all up to you and your 448 feet, Ebright Azimuth. Hey, that sounds like a pretty interesting name, right? Kinda mystical and otherworldly, I'd say. I think we're onto something here. Let's check the fast facts:

1. It's the second lowest highpoint of any state. Huh. Second lowest isn't really that interesting, is it? Maybe if it were the lowest, but, well, it isn't. Let's try again.

2. The exact elevation is 447.35 feet. There's actually a trailer park a couple miles away that is about 450 feet, but those extra couple of feet are the result of man-made construction, so surveyors don't count them. No, that's way too pedantic to be interesting. Look, what about the thing's name? That has got to be interesting.

3. The "Ebright" is actually named after the road that the highpoint is near, which in turn is named after a local family. "Azimuth" is actually just the horizontal component of direction. Damn it, Delaware, "Azimuth" should have been a demon or some shit. Or maybe a slurred mispronunciation of my favorite science fiction author. You know what, Delaware? I'm just going to assume that is where the name came from. So you're off the hook as far as my fevered imagination goes.

This week's entry comes from The Wilmington News Journal, which is pretty much the only newspaper in Delaware that actually has a sports section. So yeah, it's got that going for it. The writer in question is one Joe Levine, who has some thoughts on the NFL Draft, which as you may or may not have heard went down this weekend. You might think Joe would be pretty pumped, considering Delaware's stud quarterback Joe Flacco got taken in the first round by a reasonably local team. Of course, if you do think that, you don't know Joe Levine. Shame on you, reader, for not knowing that. Shame on you.

That sonic boom you felt Saturday afternoon was the first round of the NFL draft flying by. In case you missed it, literally, teams in the first round this year had a mere 10 minutes, instead of the usual 15, to make their individual selections.

Ha ha! Sonic boom! That's ridiculously fast, which means Joe is mocking the NFL draft for barely improving the speed of the draft! Brilliant!

Of course, the NFL couldn't be totally sensible. The draft didn't start until 3 p.m. There is nothing more peaceful than going to sleep to the sounds of Mel Kiper Jr.

Of course, it did end by like 9:30. Unless you live in Suriname (UTC-3 peeps represent!), that really shouldn't be late enough to put you to sleep, especially when it's your, you know, job to stay awake and cover this thing. Or can we take it from this that you, Joe Levine, are hideously, hideously old? We better be able to, because that's what I'm doing.

If I was commissioner for a day -- scratch that; I need just 10 minutes --

It'd take you only ten minutes to suspend all the black players? That's pretty fast. No, wait, sorry, you're not Roger Goodell. My mistake. Carry on.

here's how I'd make the draft more fun:

Please say bikini cheerleaders, please say bikini cheerleaders, please say bikini cheerleaders...

(By the way, you're welcome. Consider that my apology for not posting lately.)

1. Two minutes per pick for every round, with three five-minute "timeouts" per team for trade talk. Simply put, if you're a general manager you have three choices -- trade your pick, fill a need or take the best talent on the board. There is no Plan D.

Look, I'm all for speeding things up a bit, I guess, but let's not trivialize this. I mean, this is the future of the franchise (and, by extension, the jobs of the people who make the draft decisions) we're talking about here. Not really sure you should be rushing things.

Yes, the draft is a pile of dominoes, but if Yahoo can figure out how to automate a fantasy baseball draft for hacks like me, you can figure what to do when the guy you wanted as your backup weakside linebacker goes to Detroit instead.

And those automated drafts pretty consistently generate shitty teams. That's especially true in the draft, where you need to draft for specific needs while not reaching too badly if there isn't a clear answer at the position you want. Also, I like how "weakside linebacker" is being used with the same old school derision for technicalities usually reserved for the likes of "VORP." You know what a weakside linebacker is? Fucking egghead!

(Good tip -- if Detroit takes him, you may have been wrong about the guy, anyway.)

That's a fucking burn right there. But at least no one can take Matt Millen's amazing rapping prowess away from him:



That's the real legacy Chris Long has inherited: the coveted title of Whitest Rapper Ever.

2. No draft signings before draft day. The suspense of the first pick is fun, but even more fun is when the team you hate has the first pick but can't sign him.

And yet...you wanted the draft to go quicker? Because theoretically you could require teams that have already signed their players to immediately announce their pick. Question of priorities, I guess. Let me see if I've got these straight:

Joe Levine's Official Draft Priorities
1. Schadenfreude
2. Keeping it short
3. Keeping it real

Not a bad board. But where oh where are the bikini cheerleaders?

3. At this point, there is no college football player at any level in any hemisphere that Kiper hasn't heard of. Let's put Kiper on the clock. From now on, he gets two months to do his scouting. We'll send him to a Caribbean island for the other 10 months, but it won't have Internet, cell phone or cable TV service. Just once, I want to hear Kiper react to a selection by saying, "I have no idea who this guy is."

At first, I thought he wanted Kiper to draft all the players for all the teams, which I'm pretty sure a quick analysis of Kiper's mock draft history would reveal to be a laughably bad idea (maybe not any more laughably bad than letting the likes of Matt Millen pick, but still). But instead he's just proposing Mel Kiper disappear for most of the year. Which is actually a kind of novel way of restating the hacky "You think they just freeze Mel Kiper until the draft?" joke that always gets, well, unfrozen right before the draft. You know, to keep it fresh.

4. Retire Chris Berman, hire a wardrobe consultant for Keyshawn Johnson and let Dick Vitale participate.

Let's diagram this plan...

1. Get rid of an incredibly insufferable idiot who kind of knows the NFL
2. Work on Keyshawn Johnson's aesthetics while ignoring the shit spewing out of his mouth
3. Hire the most incredibly insufferable idiot imaginable who barely knows anything about his chosen sport of college basketball, let alone the NFL

Strategic brilliance, yes sir. If they were doing it today, I'm guessing they'd call the Marshall Plan the Joe Levine Plan. It would involve dropping Mel Kiper over East Berlin. I would approve.

5. Require any prospective picks who are present at the draft to let TV viewers listen in on their cell phone conversations.

Don't you think the FCC has enough to worry about already? You never know when Bono might go back to the Golden Globes, after all...

6. The team with the first pick hosts the draft each year. Combined with suggestion No. 2, this is sure to produce a ton of boos, no matter whom the team picks.

I'll one-up you, Mr. Joe Levine. Let's just give all the first round picks to the New York Jets. Somehow, they will manage to screw up every single pick, and a great city will burn before the night is out. Colt Brennan with the second pick? Kevin Smith at number five? Adrian Arrington at thirteen? Don't mind if I do!

NFL DRAFT LIVE BLOG!!!

I just tuned in and already we've got a couple of doozies. Kirk Herbstreit referred to Matt Ryan as having intangibles that are "off the chart." Really? We can chart intangibles now?!? Like in Excel?!?

*nerdgasm*

Okay I'm done. Diane Long, Chris's mom, was asked by Suzy Kolber what Chris inherited from his mom. In what I hope was tongue in cheek, she said something about energy and "motor." God, the draft rules.

Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and liveblog this thing, cos I mean if Bill Simmons can do this stuff, so can I. Passive Voice and Archie Micklewhite MAY be joining us, but who knows. Enjoy the draft!

2:35 PM Berman keeps telling everyone "Happy Draft!" Does he think that this is an actual holiday? Certainly feels like it to me...

Late Great Bill Walsh

Bill Walsh is still dead. Let the record show that I have thought for some time that he was the most overrated coach in the history of overrated coaches. His "innovative" West Coast offense? Yeah, the '72 Dolphins that everyone loves to hate now was running that offense under Don Shula and Howard Schnellenberger.

In any case, now that Sports Illustrated has opened its digital archive, we can go back and see exactly what was written ten years ago. Remember back when people were wondering if the Colts should take Peyton Manning or Ryan Leaf with the first overall pick in 1998? Peter King asked Bill Walsh who he would take and Bill Walsh's answer was "NEITHER!"

"I don't see Favre or Elway," Walsh says. "I see those guys on the next level. But Manning seems to be more pro-ready than Leaf."

The oft-quirky Walsh was the only one of the six experts who said he wouldn't take Manning with the first choice. "I'd pick another top player," he says, "and then I'd take [Michigan quarterback] Brian Griese in the second round. I think he could have the tools to be special."

I hate to kick a guy when he's dead, but considering the bright ol' halo glowing around Walsh's head, I think it's always good to put these things in perspective. Hang on let me go to all caps here:

GENIUS BILL WALSH WOULD HAVE PICKED BRIAN GRIESE OVER PEYTON MANNING.

The point isn't just that Bill Walsh wasn't the genius that people thought he was. The point is, and this is particularly important to remember this weekend, that nobody really knows what's what until a long time after the draft is done.

Frank Deford = Andy Rooney

I've never seen the two of them in the same room at the same time, so I'm going to go ahead and assume that they are, in fact, the same person. This piece over at SI.com seems to support this half-baked idea.

Possibly because I'm scared of technology, I'm not always pleased by what are called "advances" in our society. Sometimes I think we were better off in more innocent times -- which is, to say, back when I could understand stuff better.

This is really like shooting fish in a barrel. At least Frank's being honest.

Actually, I consider myself secular Amish.

Really? So you don't accept any government insurance, Social Security benefits, or use electricity? Oh I see what you did. You just pigeon-holed a whole culture into a tired stereotype. Man, it's a good thing for SI that William Donohue isn't Amish.

Synthetic rackets pretty much ruined the beauty of tennis. Children have no business swinging lethal aluminum baseball bats. Now there's even talk that a new bathing suit made by Speedo, in which all sorts of swimmers are setting world records, constitutes "technological doping."

I don't know enough about tennis to say whether synthetic rackets "ruined" it. And I'm not going to comment on swimming, even though, this seems kind of silly. But, if Penn & Teller ever start running out of ideas for Bullshit!, they should do a show on the "aluminum bat scare." This idea that aluminum bats are "lethal" is crap from an ass. If I was so inclined, I'd take on this story from the New York Fucking Times, but I'm not. I'll just say that it's emotionally manipulative and relies completely on anecdotal evidence in spite of the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever that aluminum bats are less safe than wood.

You know what's even worse? Technology has made it so there are so few surprises left in the world. Is that really an advance? Parents know whether their baby is a boy or girl long before it's born. You can tell who's calling you on the phone before you answer. The real joy in taking photographs was that you didn't know how they turned out 'til you got them back from the Photo Zip a few days later. Of course, some of the pictures were awful, but what's the fun of taking only safe shots instead of snap shots?

Jesus H. Christ, Frank is hearkening back to a time long gone. I am in my mid-twenties and I cannot recall a time when 1-hour photo was readily available. In any case, I'm not sure what's wrong with efficiency and better, more satisfying results. My hypothesis: Frank Deford is a Communist.

Maybe that's why sport gets more popular all the time. It's about the last thing we have that still has some suspense to it.

I don't know about that, Frank. I can think of a few pretty surprising things from the last few years that weren't necessarily very pleasant. Surprising stuff happens all the time. Surprises are neither inherently good nor bad.


And that's why I can't stand the National Football League and National Basketball Association drafts. What disappoints me so about these protracted selections is that fans don't want surprises in the draft. Really, they don't. They want to look into the camera and see the picture before it's taken.

Not sure about that. People want to know what their team is going to do with a high pick and they want to talk about it. It's a parlor game.

For weeks now, leading up to the real NFL draft this weekend, all sorts of self-appointed experts have been creating so-called mock drafts, and basically, they're all the same. Oh, some bloviator might have this linebacker going third and that one pegs him fourth, but it's pretty much the same names at the top. The fans get brainwashed, and so if their team should dare take somebody who wasn't touted by the echo chorus, they have a fit. Mock drafts become the reality that reality must accommodate itself to. It's like in school now, where children study how to take tests rather than study how to learn something.

Actually, and I'm not going to cite this, but various mock drafts this year had the Dolphins taking Matt Ryan, Jake Long, Chris Long, Glenn Dorsey, Vernon Gholston, Darren McFadden, or trading down. The whole point of mock drafts IS that it's all guess work. Nobody really knew what the Dolphins would do until they signed Jake Long yesterday, and that trickles down the draft. If Miami were to take Matt Ryan, wouldn't that make a big difference in what, say, Atlanta does at number three?

And yeah, if a team takes some wide receiver and his whole family with their first round pick instead of the best quarterback available when the team badly needs a quarterback, then their fans SHOULD be upset. Dammit.

It's also terribly ironic. Football fans always want their team to go for it on fourth down instead of punting, to take risks on the field, but when draft day comes they're all conditioned by now to be completely conservative ... lemmings.

Because watching your team go for it on fourth and short is exciting. And watching your team draft a Ryan Leaf or a Ki-Jana Carter or an Akili Smith is decidedly less fun and/or exciting.

And, of course, draft mistakes are legion. But draft-guessing has become a cottage industry, and essentially these seers are graded on how they assess the draft, not how their top selections actually play football after they are drafted. It would be as if you judged your stock broker on how well he picked the most popular stocks, not how well he chose stocks that actually went up in value.

Frank, you pillack. Mel Kiper's job isn't to tell me who the best players are. His job is to tell me who he thinks the Ravens might take at number eight and to tell me who these guys are when they DO get drafted. We grade the coaches and general managers on how the players play. Also, you communist, stock value is related to supply and demand. Popularity is directly related to demand.

I sometimes have the feeling that the more film we have of these players, the more sophisticated technology to study them, the less we know, both about the players being chosen and the professionals who choose them. Football people have guts. I think, though, that too few of them any longer dare possess gut instinct.

That's right. We shouldn't look at film or educate ourselves about college players. Just go with your gut, football personnel people. Less is more! Up is down! Black is white! Why do I have to press the start key to shut down this computer??

The Draft is this weekend! Yay!

Every year around this time, someone somewhere decides that it is time to write up an article about past NFL busts. Today the spotlight turns to Charles Bricker of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, who decided to write about quarterbacks being drafted too early.

It has been 10 years since the San Diego Chargers made an $11 million mistake by using the No. 2 pick in the NFL Draft to select quarterback Ryan Leaf.

Eleven million dollars in signing bonus money. Plus his salary. Plus the unforgivable waste of a very high first-round selection, which so badly stalled the Chargers' progress that it would be six years before the club would have a season with more wins than losses.

Teams that are picking second overall usually really, really, really suck. That's why they're picking second overall. Even if Ryan Leaf has turned out to be a decent quarterback, it stands to reason that they might still continue to suck for six years. Furthermore, this is total cherry picking. The Chargers were so set back by the Ryan Leaf pick that in 1999, one year after making this franchise devastating pick... that they went 8-8. One of those eight losses was a 3-point loss to the Chicago Bears at home. So basically, Charlie, if the Chargers had barely beaten the Bears in that game, and had been 9-7 and in contention for a playoff spot/division crown (the Chiefs and Seahawks each won 9 games), suddenly the Ryan Leaf pick isn't so bad.

If Leaf was the only quarterback upon whom a small fortune had been squandered, San Diego's embarrassing misjudgment could be excused as an aberration.

In fact, year after year NFL clubs throw away millions, and high draft picks, in gambles on the most important position in football.

Year after year, NFL clubs throw away millions, and high draft picks, in gambles on ALL the positions in football. More on this later.

In all, 28 quarterbacks have been drafted in the first round since 1998. Four have been abject failures — David Carr (Houston, 2002), Tim Couch (Cleveland, 1999), Akili Smith (Cincinnati, 1999) and Leaf (1998).

Yeah, man, all these dudes were terrible, though Carr's offensive line was putrid and there's a legitimate argument that that ruined him. But whatever. Yeah, they all sucked donkey balls.

Another nine have been less than mediocre, though they, too, have become multimillionaires because of their teams' desperate draft choices.

Okay since Charlie doesn't say who he's talking about, I can't even guess at who he means here, though I suppose I COULD look it up. *sigh* Okay, more on THIS in a moment.

Only Eli Manning (New York Giants, 2004), Ben Roethlisberger (Pittsburgh, 2004) and Peyton Manning (Indianapolis, 1998) have reached elite status — all Super Bowl winners. Now, five days before the draft, a number of teams must ponder whether Boston College's Matt Ryan is the next first-round quarterback mistake.

Holy shit. God, I AM gonna have to look that up aren't I. Stay here, and watch this while I do my research...

Okay, I'm back. Here are the guys who, since the 1998 Draft have been taken as first round quarterbacks. Feel free to skip the list, as I'll summarize at the end. OR you could read the list with comments!

1. Peyton Manning IND, 1998 (Maybe the best QB ever to play the game)
2. Ryan Leaf SD, 1998 (Terrible)
3. Tim Couch CLE, 1999 (Actually led the Browns to a playoff berth, but then sucked due to injury)
4. Donovan McNabb PHI, 1999 (Damned good, maybe an "elite QB")
5. Akili Smith CIN, 1999 (Jesus Christ, I can't believe this guy was a first round pick)
6. Daunte Culpepper MIN, 1999 (How much of his success was due to Randy Moss? I dunno. But Culpepper was a legitimate MVP candidate that year that Peyton threw 49 TD passes)
7. Cade McNown CHI, 1999 (Another terrible Bears QB)
8. Chad Pennington NYJ, 2000 (As much as I hate the Jets as a Dolphins fan, even I have to admit Pennington hasn't been that bad. He's been injured alot, and that contributes to him maybe being a bust, but he had a pretty damn good year in 2002.)
9. Michael Vick ATL, 2001 (Uhm... Vick was pretty good for a while before that whole pound puppy thing. I'd say NOT a bust.)
10. David Carr HOU, 2002 (Bust)
11. Joey Harrington DET, 2002 (Bust)
12. Patrick Ramsey WAS, 2002 (Bust)
13. Carson Palmer CIN, 2003 (I'd say Carson's been pretty damned good)
14. Byron Leftwich JAX, 2003 (Mediocre? Certainly not an out and out bust. Also really was injured alot.)
15. Kyle Boller BAL, 2003 (Bust)
16. Sex Cannon CHI, 2003 (I'm leery of calling him a bust, even though Archie will probably want to kill me for this. But they did get to the Super Bowl with him in 2006, so by Charlie's logic, if the Bears had somehow won that ONE game, Sexy Rexy would be an elite quarterback and Peyton wouldn't be?)
17. Eli Manning NYG, 2004 (Pretty good, but elite? Weren't they calling for his head in New York around midseason last year?)
18. Philip Rivers SD, 2004 (Yeah, I know the Giants picked him, and the Chargers picked Eli, but I'm ignoring that. Still kind of soon to tell, but Rivers has been at least decent to pretty good, no? Certainly not a bust.)
19. Ben Roethlisberger PIT, 2004 (Very good)
20. JP Losman BUF, 2004 (Maybe a bust)
21. Alex Smith SF, 2005 (Still too soon to tell)
22. Aaron Rodgers GB, 2005 (Still too soon to tell)
23. Jason Campbell WAS, 2005 (Still too soon to tell. I'm copying and pasting at this point.)
24. Vince Young TEN, 2006 (Pretty damned good so far...)
25. Jay Cutler DEN, 2006 (Still too soon to tell)
26. Matt Leinart ARI, 2006 (Still too soon to tell)
27. JaMarcus Russell OAK, 2007 (Still too soon to tell)
28. Brady Quinn CLE, 2007 (Still too soon to tell)

So if we knock out everyone from Smith onward (which maybe unfairly excludes Vince Young), we're down to 20. Of those twenty, 8 have been good or very good, and two have been serviceable or better than mediocre. The other ten have been out and out mediocre. So essentially, we're looking at a fifty-fifty proposition. Not great, but not terrible.

The point is that Charles Bricker thinks that Eli Manning is better than Donovan McNabb, Carson Palmer, and Daunte Culpepper in their respective primes. Furthmore, Charles Bricker thinks that if the Bears had managed to beat the Colts in the Super Bowl last year, Rex Grossman would be an "elite quarterback" while Peyton Manning would not. Charles Bricker is a stupid person.

By all estimates, he'll be taken among the top 10 players. Kansas City at No. 5 must upgrade at quarterback. Baltimore at No. 8, which in 2003 wasted a first-rounder on Kyle Boller, is in position to blow off another top pick. Carolina, at No. 13, might strike a deal with New England for the No. 7 spot.

Ryan, 6-foot-5 and 224 pounds, is sturdy enough to endure a few hits in the pocket, but an impressive scramble against Virginia Tech notwithstanding, he's no runner and, while he threw 56 touchdown passes, he also threw 37 interceptions.

Okay so he might be good or he might suck.

Scouts have praised his poise and leadership, but there's nothing unusual about those qualities in leading college quarterbacks, and none of that has much meaning when the QB is facing an NFL pass rush. The Dolphins' John Beck is a good example of a "poised" collegian who looked panicked in his rookie NFL season.

Jesus, dude. John Beck played in a grand total of five games, starting four of those, on maybe the worst team in NFL history. You really want to use "'poised'" in "sarcastic" quotation "marks" like that based on five "games"?

That said, there is a lot to recommend Ryan. Downfield passing isn't his forte, which is essentially an arm strength issue, but neither was it Joe Montana's stock in trade. Ryan was a successful quarterback on a team that didn't have a strong running game or great receivers.

More to the point, however, in a year that is not rich with quarterback prospects, Ryan is the best of the bunch.

And next year is probably going to be even worse. Seriously, who's good that's going to be draft eligible next year? You really think Tim Tebow is going to be a great NFL quarterback? Point is if you need a quarterback, Matt Ryan might not be a bad way to go. I mean there are few great throwers and the position is pretty important.

Why do teams over-draft quarterbacks? Because there are few great throwers and because the position is so important. For many clubs, that justifies the expense, even knowing that far more first-rounders fail than achieve.

Plagiarist. Anyway, this isn't even true. It's about even money.

Of course first-round quarterbacks succeed. There were six first-rounders running the 12 playoff offenses last season and one of them, Eli Manning, won the Super Bowl. But the runner-up, Tom Brady, was a sixth-round pick and two other playoff quarterbacks, Tony Romo of Dallas and Jeff Garcia of Tampa Bay, were undrafted.

AHEM. The New York Giants won the Super Bowl. Eli Manning didn't complete that pass to Eli Manning. Eli Manning didn't sack Tom Brady. Isn't using Super Bowl wins as the standard for an "elite" quarterback even dumber than using wins to measure pitchers?

Romo is now earning the sort of money given first-round quarterbacks. But there is a difference. He's a proven commodity. If sanity prevails this year, Ryan might be the only first-round quarterback this year, though how many desperate clubs will leap at Joe Flacco of Delaware or Chad Henne of Michigan?

Another thing: Why do people like to point out all the late round picks like Brady or guys like Romo who didn't get drafted at all without pointing out the vast number of guys drafted late or not at all that don't do a thing in the NFL? I'd say that first round pick quarterbacks pan out at a greater rate than late round picks. In fact, I've already shown this to be true. Anyone want to bet their life that quarterbacks drafted later than the third round pan out at a better rate than 50%? Didn't think so.

Two quarterbacks were taken in 2007's first round, though it's too early to judge if they've been a waste of cash and picks.

Most (only?) reasonable thing said so far.

JaMarcus Russell, the No. 1 pick, signed a six-year deal with Oakland, though he's already missed the first year because he signed so late he missed training camp, was handed only one start, threw 66 passes, pitched four interceptions and fumbled four times.

No one is complaining too hard … yet. Without a training camp, he wasn't ready to play, even for a bad team. He'll have his camp this year and the Raiders will soon know whether he's worth the $37.5 million in guaranteed money he's being paid.

The only time an NFL player will have guaranteed leverage over a team is when he's drafted in the first round. Why are we faulting guys for getting theirs when the team can cut the guy on virtually a moment's notice? Did anyone expect Russell to come in, holdout or not, and light it up this year? Why does this post have so many rhetorical questions?

Furthermore, the Raiders also took Robert Gallery with a first rounder a few years back. Teams take terrible players with first round picks all the time. Not just quarterbacks. But that's for another post.

Brady Quinn, the No. 22 pick by Cleveland, missed 11 days of training camp before signing a five-year deal that paid him a $7.75 million signing bonus.

He threw three passes and spent his rookie year watching Derek Anderson rejuvenate the Browns and give rise to predictions that Cleveland could be back in the playoffs for the first time in six years.

Who is Derek Anderson? He was draft guru Mel Kiper's 14th-best quarterback in 2005, right after the eminently forgettable No. 13 Gino Guidugli.

Baltimore drafted Anderson in the sixth round and paid him a pittance, by NFL standards, before waiving him Sept. 20. He was claimed by Cleveland, where he was 10-5 as a starter last season.

Yeah some of those guys will turn out to not suck.

Unless he has a startling reversal of form, he could be more than just an alternate to the Pro Bowl this season.

Please. There have been tons of guys who've had one or two great years and then flamed out quickly. It happens in sports (not just football) all the time. It would not be "startling" for Anderson to return to his previous suckitude.

And Quinn? Carrying a clipboard and collecting his prodigious salary? The Browns will want to see if Anderson can continue with his elevated play before deciding to deal Quinn for a draft pick or proven player.

It's arguable that Quinn isn't ready to play yet anyway. How many quarterbacks have been good as rookies or second year players? I can just think of two or three-- Dan Marino, Big Ben, and maybe Peyton Manning, the latter of whom benefited from playing with Marshall Faulk and then Edgerrin James in his backfield.

In either case, they're stuck for his signing bonus, like so many other teams who have drafted a first-round QB, and, even if they dump him, they're also responsible for his salary cap figure.

Again, dude. Still too soon to tell. Brady Quinn could turn out to be really damned good. And then I'll point and laugh at you. Again.

There are Peyton Mannings out there. And Roethlisbergers.

But every one of them there are four Joey Harringtons or Byron Leftwiches. And the wasted dollars keep piling up — a mountain of money mocking most of the teams that can't resist drafting a quarterback in the first round.

LIES. Again with this crap. There are not four Joey Harringtons or Byron Leftwiches. It's more like for every Peyton, there's a Joey. As a beleaguered Dolphin fan, if you gave me a quarterback and said this guy could be Peyton Manning or Joey Harrington, with a 50% chance, I'll take that bet every time.