Brian Hoyer's Roller-Coaster Season Making Cleveland QB Tough to Bench

One would think that after the stretch of bad football the Cleveland Browns have seen since 1999, Brian Hoyer would be a sight for sore eyes. After all, his record as a starter with the Browns is 10-4 and they are in the thick of the playoff hunt.

Unfortunately, the case for Hoyer is just not that simple.

There are no style points in the NFL. There is, however, a first-round quarterback sitting on the bench behind him breathing down his neck on every single play. That is precisely why Hoyer is so divisive.

For the first 59 minutes of Sunday’s game against the Atlanta Falcons, Hoyer did absolutely nothing that warranted a victory for the Browns. He was inaccurate, indecisive and made poor decisions once he did figure out where he wanted to go.

Before the final drive of the game, Hoyer was 19-of-34 for 261 yards, no touchdowns and three interceptions. His completion percentage of 56 was identical to his season average, which has him ranked 31st in the league.

What cannot be measured, however, is the moxie it takes to bounce back from those 59 terrible minutes and lead a seven-play, 61-yard, game-winning field-goal drive. He was 4-of-6—one of the incompletions was a spike to stop the clock—on the Browns' game-winning possession.

But that is exactly what Hoyer has proven himself capable of. He wins games. He wins them in ugly and frustrating fashion, but at the end of the day, he wins.

The real question is, are these wins more due to him, his team or possibly Cleveland's opponents? We have to remember that those miserable stats he posted through 59 minutes were against the lowest-ranked pass defense in the NFL.

He had All-Pro wide receiver Josh Gordon back this week as well. So if Hoyer wasn’t playing the lowly Falcons pass defense, would he have pulled out the victory? We may never know.

Truthfully, Hoyer has not been good since Week 5. Through the first five weeks of the season, he had completed 62 percent of his passes, thrown six touchdowns and just one interception. That was the reason he was ranked in the top five in the NFL in quarterback rating at that point.

	First 5 Weeks	Week 6-12
Comp %	62%	52%
TD	6	5
INT	1	7

Before Sunday’s game, Hoyer had tumbled all the way to 20th in the league in QB rating. Since Week 5, he has completed just 52 percent of his passes while throwing just five touchdowns and seven interceptions.

So who is the real Hoyer?

I am not sure, but what doesn’t make any sense is that in the first four games—when Hoyer was playing well—the team was 2-2. Since he has started stinking up the joint, the Browns are 5-2. The argument should not be about how good Hoyer is, but rather whether the Browns are winning because of Hoyer or in spite of him.

On Sunday, they won in spite of Hoyer.

The Browns have played eight games against teams in the bottom half of the league in passing defense. Still, Hoyer’s stats are unimpressive. He has lost to the 26th- and 31st-ranked passing defenses but defeated the 11th-ranked defense.

Does any of this make sense? Because it is starting to make my head hurt.

There have been a few games, like Sunday against the Falcons, where Hoyer’s mistakes and poor play put the Browns in a position to have to win the game late. So while he did have late-game heroics, he was the main culprit in putting them in that position to begin with.

But if the Browns really are to make the playoffs—and anything is possible this season—won’t Hoyer need to win close games? Doesn’t a playoff team need to have a quarterback who rises to the occasion when everything is on the line?

Then again, will Hoyer’s poor play and mistakes bury the Browns before they can get anywhere near a game-winning situation? He, and this Browns football team as a whole, are far too tough to read.

We had thought that Hoyer just needed a solid run game in order to prosper. Well, the Browns rushed for 162 yards and two touchdowns on Sunday, and Hoyer still played like garbage.

We thought that he just needed to survive until his best weapon returned from a 10-game suspension. Gordon returned, but it seemed to expose Hoyer more than liberate him.

The whole thing is very tough to figure out. This is exactly why the Browns have not offered a contract extension to Hoyer. This is also why they have not benched him for Johnny Manziel.

While he has not played well enough to garner more money and a long-term commitment, he has not played poorly enough to be relegated to the bench. This is the tightrope that Hoyer walks. This is the heart attack that Browns fans live.

So as the Browns find themselves 7-4 and in the thick of not only a playoff race but also the race for the AFC North crown, there are just as many questions to be answered at quarterback as there have ever been.

What we tend to forget is that this is a good problem.

As long as the unknown of Manziel lurks on the sidelines, it means the Browns are winning. That is something they have done very little of since their return to the NFL.

They are already assured a tie for their third-best record since 1999. It also seems as though a few more wins should be in order. If that is the case, then we get to continue on this Hoyer roller coaster for the rest of the season. I hope you packed your Dramamine.