Mangini Knows The Starter But He's Not Telling

NFL News - September 8th, 2009 - Written by Scott

Cleveland Brown's head coach Eric Mangini has decided on a starting quarterback.  However, he has no intention of revealing who has won the battle between Brady Quinn and Derek Anderson anytime between now and kick off of their season opening game against the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday.  Neither Quinn nor Anderson know who will get the starting role, but Mangini does plan to meet with each one individually. 

Quinn and Anderson have been in the battle all through preseason.  Mangini feels comfortable with both quarterbacks and plans to keep them on the roster.  He wanted to use the entire preseason to evaluate the two before making his decision.  Mangini made an interesting decision as he sat both quarterbacks in last week's preseason final game against Chicago.  He did further say that both quarterbacks have improved during their battle.

"I have been happy with the progress that both guys made," he said. "I'm happy with the way they've worked. I'm happy with the way they approached this competition, and it's not always easy to approach a competition in a team fashion, and I respect the way they've handled it."

Mangini, a former defensive coordinator is using his decision to delay announcing a starter to his advantage against the Vikings.  He feels preparing for two quarterbacks is much more difficult for a defensive coordinator than having to prepare for one.  On the contrary, Viking's coach Brad Childress has said that this will have no effect on how he prepares defensively for the Brown's.

"It doesn't," he said. "Just schematically, you're going to go back and look at tape and see what you've seen. And then I know, as do our guys, that there will be unscouted looks. They certainly haven't showed their whole hand, offensively and defensively. So you're just going back and looking at formation-wise where they're putting people and what kind of players they are. It will be more about us deploying to what they do."  

During the 30 minutes of practice that the media was allowed to attend on Monday, both quarterbacks showed no sign of who the starter might be. Joshua Cribb's is anxiously awaiting the starter to be announced though.  "Both of them are great quarterbacks," he said. "You can look at through our preseason and see the success that both of them had. There's a lot of room for both of them to get better. Yeah, I'm interested and whoever the coach chooses we're behind him 100 percent."

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