From Frye To Anderson

When Charlie Frye went down with a hand injury against the Kansas City Chiefs in Week 13 of the season, the Cleveland Browns were not only trading in their starting quarterback for a back-up who had never attempted to complete a pass attempt in an NFL regular season contest. The Browns were also trading away a quarterback in Frye, who in college completed almost 64% of his pass attempts, for someone in Derek Anderson, who while at Oregon State barely completed over half of his collegiate throws. Since it is highly unlikely for a quarterback who throws a large number of passes in the NFL to exceed his college completion percentage, the Browns were handing the keys to their offense to a less accurate version of Michael Vick with zero of Vick's running ability.

Amazingly enough, Derek Anderson, despite never throwing a regular season pass, played competently in the first three games in which he saw extended action, completing 62.2% of his passes and throwing five touchdowns to four interceptions. At least, until today where he connected on only ten of his twenty-seven pass attempts, being intercepted four times with one of the interceptions being returned for a touchdown, thereby allowing everyone to see what regression to the mean looks like in its most purest form.

Fortunately for the Cleveland Browns, the quarterback change did not affect their season as they were headed for a full off-season before Frye was injured. While Frye still has his warts, throwing more interceptions than touchdowns in his short career, he is still the best quarterback on the Cleveland Browns roster since there is no way Anderson or Ken Dorsey will be able to out-play him over the long run.