Derek Anderson will start Sunday’s game .

Derek Anderson will
start Sunday’s game .

COMBINED DISPATCHES

BEREA — Charlie Frye went from starter to starting over, and Brady Quinn moved up a notch.

In two days, the Cleveland Browns’ complicated, confusing and crowded quarterback carousel took a dizzying spin.

Frye, benched before halftime in Sunday’s season opener, was traded to Seattle for a sixth-round draft pick Tuesday, a stunningly swift move that raises Quinn, the Browns’ high-profile rookie QB, to No. 2 on the depth chart.

With Frye no longer in the picture, the Browns will start Derek Anderson, who lost the quarterback competition to Frye during the preseason, at home Sunday against the Cincinnati Bengals.

Quinn, the heir apparent, will be Anderson’s backup.

How soon until Quinn starts?

Browns general manager Phil Savage said that starting Quinn has been discussed and that the former Notre Dame star could soon be under center.

“I think there is a feeling that he’s certainly closer to being ready to play,” Savage said. “We want to be able to give him a full gamut of plays and give him a chance to have some success. I don’t know if that happens in two weeks, four weeks, six weeks.

“The important thing in the big picture is that we develop Brady Quinn in the right way. That is the most important thing that we have to do this year and that’s what we’re trying to do this year. And, win.”

Cleveland’s trade of Frye is unprecedented. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, he’s the first quarterback since the NFL-AFL merger in 1970 to start his team’s season opener and be traded before Week 2.

“This move obviously clarifies our quarterback situation,” Savage said with a straight face. “ … Some people think we’re doing some kind of experiment, but we’re not. We’re trying to win, and unfortunately things got derailed Sunday before it even got started.”

Dorsey will mentor Quinn

The Browns, embarrassed 34-7 by the Pittsburgh Steelers in their home opener, will go into Week 2 with three quarterbacks on their roster and only one of them, third-stringer Ken Dorsey, has won an NFL game.

Dorsey, signed to a one-year contract Tuesday — 10 days after the Browns cut him — will serve as a mentor to Quinn, who might have been the opening-week starter if he hadn’t missed 11 days of training camp in a contract holdout.

SportsTime Ohio caught up with Frye at the airport.

“[The trade] just came out of nowhere,” Frye said. “I was named the starter [on Sept. 3]. Now I’m getting on a flight to Seattle.

“I feel there’s a lot left in me. I want to thank Cleveland. I just gave it my all. … If I could go back and change anything, I wouldn’t as far as my preparation.”

Two tracks

Savage insisted that dealing Frye and shuffling the quarterback deck was not a knee-jerk reaction.

“We really haven’t changed our plans. We’ve adjusted,” he said. “We had two tracks. One track had Charlie and Derek over here, and one track had Brady over here. We’ve still got one quarterback on that track.

“We’ve got a guy [Anderson] who has started some games, whose got a big arm and who has shown some potential. We’ve got a future, franchise quarterback [Quinn]. We’ve got the veteran mentor [Dorsey], and we’ve got a sixth-round pick for another guy. I think we’ve maximized what we had on board here at that position.”

Savage praised Frye for the way he handled two-plus turbulent seasons with the Browns, who are just 40-89 since 1999.

“He came into a very tough situation,” Savage said.

XSteve Doerschuk of Gatehouse News Service contributed to this story.