Browns, Ravens have history of instability at QB

Cleveland GM Phil Savage has seen both sides of the controversy.

GATEHOUSE NEWS SERVICE

It’s not spot on to say the Browns and Ravens are joined at the hip.

There’s something of a dislocated hip in this discussion.

It’s a weird connection, actually, between Cleveland, which had the Browns from 1946-95 then lost them, and Baltimore, where the franchise landed.

The weirdness is magnified by the fact Cleveland GM Phil Savage has worked for both the old Browns, the Ravens and the new Browns — and no one else in his NFL career.

The common thread weaving through the last two decades has been quarterback instability in Cleveland and Baltimore.

The problems caused therein are one reason Savage won’t knee-jerk jump from Derek Anderson to Brady Quinn. They’re the sorts of reasons that persuaded the Giants to stay with Eli Manning, the Jets to keep giving Chad Pennington chances, the Bears not to bail out too soon on Rex Grossman, for better or for worse.

For all but a year and a couple games, Bill Belichick’s quarterback in New England has been Tom Brady.

But Belichick ran into trouble in Cleveland in the ’90s because he kept running out new quarterbacks. Within five years, he started Bernie Kosar, Todd Philcox, Mike Tomczak, Vinny Testaverde, Mark Rypien and Eric Zeier.

Some fans were almost glad that mess moved to Baltimore.

One reason it stayed a mess until the team developed a transcendent defense was the quarterback shuffle.

The Ravens went 10-21-1 during the team’s first two Baltimore years, mostly behind Testaverde.

Zeier and Jim Harbaugh took turns not winning in 1998, when the record was 6-10.

Three was not a charm in 1999, when Tony Banks, Stoney Case and Scott Mitchell all got starts.

The team won a Super Bowl in 2000, but it was not because Banks and Trent Dilfer were a platoon in the Joe Montana-Steve Young mold.

Current Ravens players still call the 2001 QB “Elvis Freaking Grbac.” Hey, Elvis wasn’t that bad. He just wasn’t good.

Ravens starters since then have included Jeff Blake, Chris Redman, Kyle Boller, Anthony Wright and Steve McNair, and never for long.

As part of that weird connectedness, Savage was with the Ravens when he scouted Anderson in the autumn of 2004. Baltimore drafted Anderson in the spring of 2005, cut him that fall and no doubt talked all day about Savage — then the new Browns GM — grabbing Anderson off the waiver wire.

The Ravens felt some cruel irony in nose-diving amid QB problems while Cleveland rose with Anderson in 2007.

Of course, there was poetry in the irony, since Baltimore stole Cleveland’s team.

Now, Savage is trying to apply some of his education to where he goes — and where Anderson goes — from here.

Cleveland’s recent quarterback history is to continuity what snowball is to Hell.

The Browns have had six designated starting QBs — Tim Couch, Kelly Holcomb, Jeff Garcia, Trent Dilfer, Charlie Frye, Derek Anderson — in six years.

Quinn would make it seven, a streak the Arena League couldn’t match.

Meanwhile, the Ravens head into 2008 with aching Steve McNair coming off his 35th birthday party, the quarterback-iffy No. 8 overall draft pick in hand and a perpetual problem staring them in the beak.

Mr. Rodgers’ icebox

Aaron Rodgers, the Packers’ new No. 1 quarterback, joined a Christian outreach group visiting military folks at an Alaskan Army base, Fort Wainwright. Rodgers took a shift as a driver in a sled dog race.

Gary Curlee of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner wrote, “Rodgers once again found himself facing the rear ends of several athletes poised for action.”

Rodgers spent the last three years backing up Brett Favre.

That had to be frustrating — he was a Round 1 pick, and those guys almost always get a chance to play by their second year — but it’s not as if he turned into an old man. He was just 21 when he left Cal. He turned 24 in December.

Where’s the beef?

In 2005, Rodgers hoped to be drafted much higher than No. 24 overall. In retrospect, five or six teams drafting ahead of Green Bay wish they would have grabbed Rodgers.

It wasn’t much of a draft

The top 10, in order: Alex Smith, Ronnie Brown, Braylon Edwards, Cedric Benson, Cadillac Williams, Pacman Jones, Troy Williamson, Antrel Rolle, Carlos Rogers and Mike Williams.