Is tonight D.A.’s last stand?

STEVE DOERSCHUK
Canton Repository

October 13, 2008 12:40 am

— CLEVELAND — Just when the autumn leaves are getting pretty, Derek Anderson’s sky is falling.
Anderson’s professional life hangs in the balance as he attempts an unlikely Monday Night Football rise against the unbeaten Super Bowl champion New York Giants.
“You dream about it as a kid,” he said, meaning a prime-time fling, obviously, and not his nightmarish September.
Anderson has beaten the odds before. The 2007 training camp was fairly far along when he was behind the ball boy on some versions of the QB depth chart.
Tonight, he is a prohibitive underdog, probably operating without tight end Kellen Winslow Jr., who was released from the Cleveland Clinic Sunday but is listed as doubtful due to an undisclosed illness.
“I’ve only played on Monday night in the preseason,” Anderson said, “but that doesn’t really count, I guess.”
It would be better if that memory didn’t even exist. It was an ugly Monday night loss to the Giants on Aug. 18.
“We just hit a couple big plays,” Giants quarterback Eli Manning said.
Manning might have mentioned Osi Umenyiora hitting Anderson, leaving the latter with a concussion.
There were reasons Manning was the first pick in the 2004 draft, whereas Anderson lasted until the sixth round in 2005.
The Browns hope those scouting secrets do not manifest themselves tonight, although so far in 2008, they have.
Almost exactly one year ago, Anderson launched the Browns into a 5-1 hot streak with a marvelous performance at home. He put up a 142.5 passer rating in a 41-31 shoot-out against Miami. He surpassed that a week later with a career-high 143.0 at St. Louis.
Those teams finished a combined 4-28.
The sun dropped out of the sky over Lake Erie. The context of this Monday night is so starkly different,
Anderson’s next two games, if he makes it that far, will be against the defending Super Bowl champs, off to a 4-0 start behind Manning, and the 4-1 Redskins.
Monday Night Football analyst Ron Jaworski, a former Super Bowl quarterback, is telling ESPN audiences Anderson looks less confident than a stock-market trader. And Browns fans ... hoo boy. They’ve been barking Brady Quinn’s name for a while now.
Anderson’s world is so upside down that Charlie Frye, whom he famously replaced in last year’s opener, made a surprise start for the Seahawks Sunday a day before what could be — in a speculator’s market — Anderson’s last start for the Browns.
Here’s how weird Anderson’s life has become. Last Monday, Quinn was a special guest on the Hank Fraley Show. Fraley, a center and a Browns captain, might not be snapping to the same QB in the second half as he does on the first series.
New York’s quarterback, on the other hand, woke up in a city whose restless QB landscape looks nothing like what his life has become.
Manning a hot quarterback on the NFL’s best team.
Weird things happen with some regularity in the NFL. Anderson outdueling Manning would be weird, all right.
Manning isn’t sure when it happened, but he’s definitely on top of the world right now.
“Our team figured out its identity,” Manning said. “Our defense started playing really well, and our offense got all the right guys in the right positions.
“It clicked, and we’ve kept the momentum going.”
Manning is working off a Super Bowl season and a great 2008 start. Anderson is trying to hang his helmet on a nice fourth quarter at winless Cincinnati.
“We started playing like we know how,” Anderson said. “It kind of carried over.”
Without trying to explain the NFL’s complex method to calculate passer rating, suffice it to say quarterbacks everybody agrees can play tend to rise to the top.
Quarterbacks who are young, aging or on borrowed time tend to languish near the bottom.
Among regular starters in 2008, the top five in passer rating are Brett Favre (110.8), Philip Rivers (103.0), Kurt Warner (102.5), Tony Romo (100.5) and Manning (99.7). Yes, Eli Manning, not the other guy.
The bottom five are Brian Griese (64.6), rookie Joe Flacco (64.6), Matt Hasselbeck (61.9), Anderson (49.9) and Tyler Thigpen (40.9).
One needn’t have earned A’s in calculus to know Anderson flunked the first quarter of his bid to stay ahead of Brady Quinn.
As one New York paper put it, “Anderson has been horrible.”
Yet, the passer-rating numbers do help to expose the depths of Anderson’s decline.
Last September, for example, when he was all the rage, his passer ratings in his first five starts were 121.0 (Bengals), 57.0 (Raiders), 109.5 (Ravens), 59.0 (Patriots), and 142.5 (Dolphins).
The next five starts likewise were mostly strong: 143.0 (Rams), 75.3 (Seahawks), 83.4 (Steelers), 73.8 (Ravens) and 96.5 (Texans).
Then the trouble began.
Anderson’s ratings for his final five starts of 2007 were 71.6 (Cardinals), 83.3 (Jets), 57.1 (Bills), 53.4 (Bengals) and 75.4 (49ers).
“It must have been the wind,” some argued, with some merit, because weather was ridiculous against Buffalo and rough at Cincinnati.
Maybe it would be better to analyze Anderson’s development on a clear day. The Browns have had four of them in 2008. Anderson’s ratings have been 74.0 (Cowboys), 44.5 (Steelers), 22.9 (Ravens), 74.7 (Bengals).
Add it all up, and it isn’t pretty for anderson.
In Anderson’s first 10 starts last year, he was below 75.0 just three times and soared above 95.0 five times.
In his last nine starts, he hasn’t touched the 90s, has exceeded 75.0 just twice, and has been below 60 four times.
If this keeps up, and one accepts that the numbers don’t lie, Romeo Crennel might be kidding himself to think Anderson can snap out of it.
Tim Couch, the accepted Cleveland standard for doomed mediocrity, had ratings of 73.2, 77.3, 73.1, 76.8 and 77.6 in his five orange-helmeted autumns.
Coming off his mini-rally to 74.7 at Cincinnati, Anderson’s career passer rating - including five appearances in 2006 - is 74.5.
In an interesting twist, Anderson’s opposite number tonight is the most shining example of why not to automatically bury a quarterback who is stuck in the 70s. Eli Manning’s career rating, even after his Super Bowl win and fast 2008 start, is 75.2.
Nobody wants to kick him out of the Big Apple now.
In July, nobody thought Anderson would look this bad. That was before the Giants sent him to the hospital in mid-August.
“(Anderson) was cleared as far as the concussion goes,” Head Coach Romeo Crennel said. “I think his decision making is still pretty good. He still commands the huddle. The verbiage ... he’s still able to get that out.”
As far as playing well? Autumn is looking lovely. Anderson is running out of time to start looking pretty.
n MONDAY REMEMBERED — Braylon Edwards is the Michigan guy playing his NFL career in Ohio State country.
As a school kid, he was the Detroit kid cheering for the 49ers.
His favorite Monday Night Football memory comes from a game he attended with his dad, Stan, on Sept. 25, 1995 at the Pontiac Silverdome.
“I was in seventh grade,” Edwards said. “I grew up a 49ers fan, so I’m cheering for the 49ers.
“Barry Sanders had a big game, and the Lions blew the 49ers out. And here I am, mad. Everybody in the arena’s like, ‘What’s wrong with him?’”
It wasn’t actually a blowout — the Lions won 27-24.
Tonight represents Edwards’ first Monday night game outside the preseason.
n A MORE RECENT MONDAY — The Giants destroyed the Browns in the first half of an Aug. 18 preseason game, leading 30-3.
Former Akron Zip Domenik Hixon scored three touchdowns in one 8 1/2-minute span. He scored on Eli Manning passes covering 11 and 24 yards, and on an 82-yard kick return following a safety.
Manning didn’t pass all that much, going 4-of-7 for 52 yards in four series.
Browns cornerback Eric Wright had trouble covering Hixon and also was nailed for a 53-yard pass interference call against Sinorice Moss.
Jamal Lewis lost a fumble. Andra Davis was nailed for an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. Derek Anderson was knocked out with a concussion.
It was one big mess.
n IRON GIANTS — Whereas injury issues have ruptured the Browns continuity, the Giants have had no major problems aside from pass rusher Osi Umenyiora going on injured reserve not long after he gave Anderson a preseason concussion.
All 11 of the Giants’ defensive starters who opened the season have started all four games. The only offensive starter not to play in all four games is wideout Plaxico Burress, and he is back from a one-game suspension.
After constant injury-related personnel shifts in the preseason, the Browns have fought with continuity issues throughout their 1-3 start.
They have made four injury-related changes on defense. If tight end Kellen Winslow Jr. (illness) and right tackle Kevin Shaffer (concussion) can’t play today, they will have made five such adjustments on offense.
n CRENNEL, COUGHLIN, CHRIS — This is more than just another Monday for head coaches Tom Coughlin and Romeo Crennel.
They were fellow Giants assistants under Bill Parcells for three years, capped by the 1990 season that ended with a Super Bowl win. Parcells’ defensive coordinator, Bill Belichick, used the 1990 season as a springboard to the Cleveland head coaching job. Coughlin parlayed it into a head coaching job at Boston College. Crennel stayed with Parcells as defensive line coach until they jumped together to the Patriots in 1993.
Small world ... New England is where Crennel got to know Chris Palmer. Palmer was head coach in Cleveland in 2000 when he hired Crennel to coordinate his defense. Now, Palmer is Coughlin’s quarterback coach with the Giants.
Coughlin indicated he’d have more to say about Crennel among friends, but ...
“Publicly ... Romeo is an excellent football coach, a great family man, an excellent individual, and a very good friend of mine.”
n FLAPPING THE JAWS — ESPN analyst Rob Jaworski, 57, is a former Youngstown State quarterback.
His claim to fame as a pro was leading the 1980 Philadelphia Eagles to the franchise’s first Super Bowl appearance.
Oakland, which beat Cleveland’s “Kardiac Kids” in a famous freezer-bowl playoff game, went on to beat Jaworski and the Eagles in Super Bowl XV.
Jaworski has worked for ESPN since 1990. He is known for candor and a less egotistical approach to explaining football than many ex-jocks maintain.

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