There is no doubt that the Cleveland Browns have struggled to find their franchise quarterback. Unfortunately it is not simply a case of evaluating a college prospect and seeing their ability to easily translate into the NFL. If it was, none of the QB busts like Ryan Leaf, Tim Couch, or Mark Bulger would ever be selected. Cleveland, like some other teams in the league have been searching for a long time to find their franchise quarterback. So much so, we have suffered through 16 different quarterbacks since the teams return in 1999. But out of all those quarterbacks, which was the best of the worst? Which quarterback had more success than any of the others. It’s sort of like “American Idol” if the contest was between semi-drunk Karaoke bar singers. So let us peer back in time and see who was the best quarterback of the new era Browns.

Since it would be pointless to consider each quarterbacks entire body of work (considering none of them were good enough to keep the job), we will instead look at each of three quarterbacks best seasons with the Cleveland Browns.

Tim Couch

Starting with the man specifically selected to build a team around we must look at Tim Couch. Couch’s best season came in 2002. That season Couch played in 14 of the Browns games with a record of 8-6. His completion percentage for the year was 61.6 throwing for 2,842 yards. He threw as many interceptions as he did touchdowns with 18 a piece, and had a QB rating of 76.8. Of course the Cleveland Browns made the playoffs that year, however he was unable to play in the Browns lone playoff game due to a broken leg. I have often wondered if he had not been injured, that things could have been very different. Couch ended up losing his started Job to Kelly Holcomb and was off the team before the 2004 season.

Charlie Frye

Charlie Frye was drafted in the third round of the 2005 NFL Draft from Akron. Frye was a local kid and the push to make him the starter was intense. He had wowed people during the 2005 pre-season and eventually worked his way into the starting role over journeyman Trent Dilfer. Frye’s best stats came in 2006 when he threw for 2,454 yards and a 64.3 completion percentage. He did thrown more interceptions than he did TD’s (10 TD’s vs. 17 Int’s) and had a QB rating of 72.2. The team went 4-9 in his 13 starts that year and he was eventually traded to the Seattle Seahawks in 2007.

Derek Anderson

Derek Anderson had by far the best season of any Cleveland Browns quarterback in recent years earning a trip to the Pro Bowl in 2007. That year Anderson threw for 29 touchdowns versus 17 interceptions. He had 3,787 yards passing with a 56.5 completion percentage and a QB rating of 82.5. Unfortunately this season was an aberration and he never came close to repeating the same type of stats as he did that year. The team went 10-5 in his 15 starts and the team narrowly missed the playoffs.

There have been a total of 20 starting quarterbacks for Cleveland since the departure of Bernie Kosar and none of them seem to be able to be successful in Cleveland. This year we once again face the question of who will lead this team’s offense. The question is do we give Colt McCoy one more shot, or do we draft a replacement hoping that they will have more success? Only time will tell. But in the mean time, tell us who you think was the better Cleveland Browns quarterback since 1999.