Brady Quinn is done for the season after further injuring his finger, which was broken in the previous week's win against the Buffalo Bills, in Sunday's fiasco against the Houston Texans which the Browns lost 16-6.
Just as we began to hear the buzz about how the Browns' promising second-year QB finally getting his shot, he goes down.
There are many speculators who believe that Coach Crennel was too quick to pull Quinn out of the game rather than letting him play through the pain and humiliation of a poor performance in which he was not at 100 percent capacity. Many say that Crennel shows favoritism toward Derek Anderson and that's why he has given him so many more chances.
These people seem to forget that Anderson has had success for the Browns in the past, granted it was inconsistent at best.
This, I believe, is the reason Crennel was quick to defer to Anderson along with the fact of Quinn's injury.
Some would argue that a broken finger is something minor that can be played through as demonstrated in the past by QBs such as Brett Favre who, in 2003, played with a hairline fracture in his throwing thumb and kept his NFL record for consecutive starts alive.
But Brady Quinn is not Brett Favre. Quinn is still young and attempting to build his confidence on the field. He has not had the time to gain the experience necessary to retain his poise under such a restraint.
I'm not sure why I hear very few people who think perhaps it would have been smarter to rest Quinn for a week or two and let him have time to heal before throwing him to the wolves. Even after the injury, there seemed to be little concern about whether something unfortunate like this would occur and plenty of talk of how great it is to keep Quinn in the starting role.
To be clear, I am not a fan of Coach Crennel. I just don't think that pulling Quinn was as horrible an idea as some make it out to be and it wasn't just favoritism towards Anderson. Crennel said himself that the injury was a big factor in his decision to pull Quinn. Whether he should have played him at all is another story.
Unfortunately, it is now after the fact and there is the benefit of hindsight where vision is 20-20.
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about 1 month ago
I don;t fault Crennel. He can only go by what the medical staff and the player tell him. Those two parties are more to blame than Romeo in this case.
Nice philosophical breakdown.
about 1 month ago
quinn should gut it out....show that he is really "the mighty quinn"
about 1 month ago
Crennel said the injury factored into his decision AFTER the extent of the injury was known. At first he said he was hoping for a "spark". I believe that pulling Quinn was motivated by self-preservation. Crennel was trying to vindicate his decision to ride Anderson off the cliff, as he did. If DA comes in and lights it up, pulls out the win.....Crennel looks as if he was doing the right thing all along. Did you see Brady Quinn's face after he was pulled? It wasn't due to the finger. If he plays the whole game, he doesn't seek that second opinion and he's the starter this week. Quinn's a smart, young man. He's going to wait out Crennel. Quinn will be here next year, Romeo won't be. I don't think Anderson will be here, either. Romeo pulled his QB during his first bad game. The same coach who watched DA stink it up week after week while insisting to start him. Now, all of a sudden, Romeo says that Quinn's the starter as soon as he's healthy no matter how Anderson performs. This guy cannot coach; period. How do you stick with DA when he stinks but say you're, now, going to bench him no matter how well he performs? Quinn is this franchise's future quarterback. Crennel will never be a head coach again. Why would Quinn want to play now? The season's over and he know's that he's wearing a 2 inch leash. Nothing good will happen for this team until Crennel has waddled out of Ohio.
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