Cleveland Browns To Start Colt McCoy Against Pittsburgh

Added on Oct 14, 2010 by Jason Kearney in

NFL

The Cleveland Browns have played fairly competitive football this season despite injuries and inconsistency at the quarterback position. Now with both starter Jake Delhomme and backup Seneca Wallace hobbling around on gimpy ankles, Browns’ coach Eric Mangini will give rookie Colt McCoy his first NFL start. Obviously NFL coaches being NFL coaches they haven’t ‘officially’ announced McCoy has the starter but all three quarterbacks have been informed of the decision and the rookie out of the University of Texas has taken all of the snaps with the first team in practice.

Not exactly an ideal situation for a rookie quarterback to make his NFL debut–on the road against a tough Pittsburgh Steelers’ defense that should be in top form motivated by the hoopla over Ben Roethlisberger’s return to action. McCoy certainly has all of the skills necessary for an NFL quarterback and is highly praised for his accuracy–he went 13 for 13 in a preseason game this year. At this point, however, his primary upside is that he’s got two working ankles.

Neither Delhomme or Wallace have practiced this week, and there’s serious questions about whether Delhomme will ever return to a form anywhere near his days as the starting quarterback in Carolina. He came on in relief of Wallace this past weekend against Atlanta and didn’t exactly impress throwing for 97 yards and 2 interceptions with no touchdowns. He wasn’t 100% himself, to be fair, but there’s serious questions in Cleveland about his future value to the team. Wallace is a solid pro and a good guy to have around as a backup but not really the ‘best case scenario’ for starting quarterback.

McCoy definitely got the job done at the college level, leaving Texas as the winningest quarterback in college football history. He handled the bigtime media pressure of playing for such a high profile program very well, so the only real concern is seeing how quickly he can adapt to the NFL game. He’ll definitely have his hands full against the #4 ranked pass defense in the NFL this Sunday.