Blogging With The Enemy

This past week, I traded questions with Pete Grasso, who runs a Cleveland Browns blog In the Blawg Pound. This was a great experience, Pete reached out to me and was wondering if we would like to trade questions prior to the game. Here are the Questions that asked with his answer, I hope everyone enjoys.

1. In your opinion, who do you think that Browns would benefit from being the starting QB and why?

Brady Quinn. No question.

Derek Anderson had his chance. His "Pro Bowl season" was a fluke and. If you look the last half of 2007 and his performance in 2008, it shows that he's really not that good. People in the Derek camp say Brady is unproven. Well, sure, in the NFL Brady is unproven because he has yet to get a chance to play. But, I watched him play four years at Notre Dame. I watched him get better each year. His last two years at Notre Dame, he led the Irish to two of it's best seasons in decades and, believe me, there really wasn't a whole lot of talent on those teams. He may have lost the "big games," but the big picture is he won a lot of games and did a lot of great things with no offensive line, no real running game and no defense to back him up.

He played at Notre Dame, for crying out loud. He was recruited by Notre Dame, Ohio State and Michigan -- three of the top programs in the country. Most anti-Brady Quinn people are really just Notre Dame-haters. That's all.

Brady is the future of the Browns and the sooner he gets to take snaps full time with the first team, the sooner the Browns will benefit from his leadership.

2. How do you think the Browns will try to contain the pressures from the Williams Wall and Jared Allen from getting to the QB?

The Browns have had offensive line problems ever since their return in 1999. But, they drafted an excellent left tackle a couple of years ago in Joe Thomas. This year, they drafted Alex Mack to play center. They're young, but they're an improvement. We're still a couple years away from having an elite offensive line, but what we do have is pretty good.

Now, how they're going to do protecting the QB against a few modern day Purple People Eaters is a different question. I expect a lot of quick, screen passes to get the ball out of Brady's hands before Jared Allen can get to him (and, yes, I'm going to go ahead and assume our QB is Brady Quinn).

3. Looking at Edwards what type of season do you think he will have 2007 or 2008? Is their a

receiver that will step up so that he will have all the attention drawn to him every game?

Obviously, I hope he'll have a season like he did in 2007 as opposed to last year. The Browns had a couple of receivers last year that could have taken the pressure off him, but failed to use them. This year, it's a different story.

Winslow is gone. Jurevicius is gone. Stallworth is gone. Instead, we've got Josh Cribbs and a couple of rookies. Cribbs has looked pretty good playing the number two receiver though, so I'm hoping he can draw some attention away from Edwards. Of course, holding on to the ball when it comes his way is the bigger problem. I'm hoping he can at least do that.

4.Do you think that the Browns should try to shut Peterson and the running or focus more of the Vikes passing game to win the game?

The Browns have not had the best luck in trying to shut down the running game, and asking them to shut down Peterson is a tall order. On the other hand, a veteran such as Favre could have a field day picking apart our young secondary. To answer your question, I say both.

5. What are your expectations from your Cleveland Browns for the game and the season?

At this point, I'm still trying to be optimistic. I'm expecting the Browns to come out in the field Sunday fired up. I expect them to come out and show they belong. I expect them to get the Dawg Pound fired up. I expect them to shock everyone and actually win this one. Are these realistic expectations? Maybe not, but it doesn't hurt to have a little hope this early in the season.

As for the rest of the season, I'm again trying to be optimistic. I'm not expecting playoffs or anything, but I do believe they'll be better than the 3-13 record The Sporting News predicted and certainly better than the 2-14 record Sports Illustrated predicted. If I had to go out on a limb, I'd say the Browns will win at least six games this year. Hopefully more.

You can view my answer and his question by going over to his site.

SKOL VIKINGS!!!!