Is It Time for the Cleveland Browns to Start Johnny Manziel?

It's been a weird season for the Cleveland Browns.

It all began back during the offseason, when the Browns fired then-head coach Rob Chudzinski after just one season. Chudzinski was fired on December 29, 2013. His replacement, Mike Pettine, wasn't hired until January 23 after reports suggested many other coaches turned away from the opportunity.

Pettine himself was a peculiar choice, not because of his perceived ability, but rather because of his inexperience. He had been a defensive coordinator for just one (very impressive) season with the Buffalo Bills after being the New York Jets' defensive coordinator under Rex Ryan for three seasons.

Being Rex Ryan's defensive coordinator isn't the same as being a defensive coordinator on most NFL teams, so Pettine's one season in Buffalo seemed to be the only season when he was fully in control.

With Pettine on board to presumably sort out the defense, the Browns needed to solve their issues on the offensive side of the ball. Kyle Shanahan was an astute addition as the team's offensive coordinator. But star receiver Josh Gordon was suspended again, and incumbent quarterback Brian Hoyer was coming off a torn ACL.

Hoyer was joined in the competition for the Browns' starting spot by Johnny Manziel, a first-round pick but not the Browns' first pick.

Despite his relative inexperience as a starter in the NFL and the significance of his injury, Hoyer always had the edge on Manziel to win the quarterback competition. Manziel was too raw coming out of college, and his struggles were evident as soon as he hit the field in the preseason.

Because of Manziel's struggles, the Browns were resigned to keeping Hoyer in the lineup without Manziel ever really pushing him for his starting spot. With Hoyer, Pettine and no Josh Gordon, it looked like the Browns were set to be a team that would be completely reliant on its defense to win games in 2014; winning many games wasn't something to be expected but rather hoped for.

Now, after 11 weeks of the NFL regular season, the Browns have just the 12th-ranked defense by DVOA (30th against the run) and the 16th-ranked offense by DVOA (26th in the running game), per Football Outsiders.

In Kyle Shanahan's creative offense, Hoyer has played a big role in keeping the Browns in position to challenge for a playoff spot. The team has compiled six victories, already more than it has in any single season since 2007, while Hoyer has thrown for 11 touchdowns and five interceptions.

On the outset, it appears that everything is going to plan for the Browns and Hoyer. It that appears Hoyer is playing well enough for the Browns to stay on course for a playoff spot. It appears that the Browns won't have any reason to start Manziel until his second season. It even appears that Hoyer could cause the Browns some problems in deciding who is their quarterback moving forward after this season.

Yet, when you look closer at what Hoyer has done this season, it makes you wonder if the Browns would be better off getting Manziel onto the field sooner rather than later.

To go along with Hoyer's impressive touchdown-to-interception ratio and the Browns' victories, the quarterback has also only completed 55.7 percent of his passes in an offensive system that should aid his completion percentage. Part of that has been poor wide receiver play, but most of it has been Hoyer's own inaccuracy.

While completing a very low percent of his passes, Hoyer is also not throwing for huge yardage. He is averaging just 254 passing yards per game (16th in the NFL), and a huge percentage of his total yards have come on big plays that Shanahan has expertly designed to create wide-open receivers downfield.

Andrew Hawkins' long touchdown against the Houston Texans last week is a great example of this.

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Shanahan has used Hoyer on play action on a regular basis this season. Often that play action will serve as a way of getting Hoyer out of the pocket, away from pressure in the pocket and simplifying his coverage reads downfield.

Against the Texans, Shanahan called very few of these plays, but the team's sole touchdown of the game came on one.

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Because of the hard play fake, Hoyer must locate his receiver downfield while moving into the opposite flat. He only has two receivers available, but both are in the same line of vision because of their routes. This means that Hoyer has a simple read.

On this occasion, Hoyer threw the ball while on the move. But the design of the play drew the pass-rushers away from him, so he did have time to stop and plant his feet if he felt the need to.

The only difficult aspect of this play was throwing the ball on the move, and even that wasn't so difficult because Hoyer's receiver downfield was wide open. Receivers often are wide open in Shanahan's offense because of his use of play action. Their quality as individuals is less important because of the routes they run and their fit within the structure of specific plays.

Hoyer has at least 940 yards on 20-plus-yard plays this season.

As the Hawkins play exemplifies, many of those plays are relatively simple for an NFL-caliber quarterback. They are the types of plays you would expect your average to below-average starter to make and definitely the types of play Manziel would be expected to make.

These are the types of plays that work well with less talented/less experienced quarterbacks. They are the types of plays that tell you very little about the physical or mental ability of the quarterback because the specific requirements of the play are so basic.

For that reason, the difference between Hoyer and Manziel's efficiency on these plays should be minimal.

Hoyer doesn't deserve to be benched based on these types of plays. He has been very effective on bootleg play-action passes down the field this season. Where he deserves to be benched is with running the rest of the offense.

Although Hoyer has only thrown five interceptions this season, he has thrown a huge number of passes that should have been intercepted but weren't because of defensive negligence.

Even as early as Week 1 against the Pittsburgh Steelers, Hoyer was being sloppy with the football and giving defensive backs quality opportunities to make plays on the ball. It's something that has hit extremes at different stages of the season and something that potentially peaked last week against the Texans.

Shanahan called a more traditional dropback passing attack instead of a bootleg play-action heavy one. That limited the easy yardage that was created for the quarterback, putting him under more pressure to read the defense and be accurate.

On at least four separate occasions, Hoyer threw a pass that was more likely to be intercepted than completed.

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Facing a 3rd-and-11 on the very first drive of the game, Hoyer came out in the shotgun with two stacked receivers to either side of the field and a running back in the backfield. Predictably, the Texans were playing off coverage while leaving the lingering threat of a blitz with their linebackers.

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Hoyer drops back to pass without faking the ball to the running back. He has space and time at the top of his drop to survey the coverage downfield. Although one of his blockers is pushed backward into the pocket, Hoyer is able to get the ball away cleanly without facing significant pressure.

This is the kind of traditional throwing situation that Shanahan hasn't put his quarterback in on a regular basis this season.

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Hoyer correctly locates a receiver running into a pocket of space down the seam and gets rid of the ball in good time. However, his pass severely sails over the head of his intended target, giving his receiver no chance of catching the football.

Instead, the ball arrives just out of the reach of the deep defensive back who will feel unlucky to not get an interception.

While that play highlighted his bad accuracy, another third-down play showed off his poor decision-making at the beginning of the third quarter.

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On 3rd-and-10, the Texans rush just three players after the quarterback. Hoyer cleanly gets to the top of his drop and isn't near any kind of pressure when he releases the football. However, as the underneath players indicate, Hoyer has gotten rid of the ball very quickly.

Against three-man rushes, even three-man rushes that feature J.J. Watt, the quarterback typically has to hold the ball to give his receivers time to find space in crowded coverage down the field.

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Hoyer doesn't give his receivers time to find space. Instead, he heaves the ball down the right sideline to a well-covered wide receiver. Furthermore, his heave lands too far infield and in a position where Johnathan Joseph would have had a simple interception if he hadn't lost the ball in the air.

Joseph turned away from the football and looked exclusively at the receiver after Hoyer had thrown the ball. He let the quarterback off the hook on this play with terrible awareness. 

Ironically, Hoyer's only interception of the game came on a relatively accurate pass that bounced off his receiver.

It's this kind of ineffectiveness that has led to Hoyer's lack of efficiency this season. Incredibly, he has had three games with at least 37 attempts when he has accumulated less than 300 yards. Against the Texans last week, he threw for 330 yards but on 50 attempts.

Those games don't even include his eight-completion performance against the Pittsburgh Steelers or his 16 completions on 41 attempts against the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Hoyer's play is undoubtedly worthy of him being benched in a vacuum, but the Browns can't look at it that way. The Browns have to consider all the different facets of the decision and understand the timing and situation their franchise is in.

While Hoyer hasn't played well, he has been an integral part of a winning team. Quarterback wins is a very flawed statistic, but the perception of Pettine will take a major hit if he changes Hoyer for Manziel now and the team suddenly starts losing.

The team definitely could start losing soon, as it enjoyed a soft schedule over the first half of the season compared to what is coming up over the final six weeks.

Furthermore, star wide receiver Josh Gordon is about to return. Gordon should give the offense a major boost, and he has played more with Hoyer than he has with Manziel in the past. It's difficult to gauge how valuable that previous connection is though, because Hoyer and Gordon only played a couple of games together.

If Manziel was brought in as a starter with Gordon, Gordon wouldn't face the potential prospect of rebuilding his relationship with Hoyer before having to build a new relationship with Manziel at a later point.

While the rest of the schedule appears tough, the Browns' next game is against the lowly Atlanta Falcons. The Falcons may have the worst defense in the NFL. It lacks the pass-rushing ability to disrupt any quarterback, and that serves as a way of easing Manziel into the speed of an NFL game.

Even if the Browns figure out all of that, Pettine then must decide if playing Manziel now could be damaging to his long-term development. The Jaguars were in this position earlier this season with Blake Bortles, and they likely regret inserting him into the lineup for this very reason.

Bortles has regressed with his mechanics since becoming the starter. His poor accuracy and decision-making have led to a large number of interceptions. Manziel didn't play well in the preseason. He didn't look ready for the NFL.

Unless he has significantly developed behind the scenes over the past 10 weeks, he would be at risk of regression as well.

With quarterback competitions and controversies, it's always easy to pick a side and run with it vociferously. Shouting about a quarterback's win percentage or outlining his physical limitations is relatively simple. For the NFL coaches making these decisions, there are always many, many different layers to consider.

The Cleveland Browns may be a better team this year if Manziel is forced into the starting lineup, but it's no guarantee. More importantly, they may be a worse team next year if Manziel is forced into the starting lineup.

No obvious answer exists for this quarterback conundrum.