Has Weeden Called An Audible Yet?

DieHardBrownsFan

Tim Coach was thrown into the worst team in history, even worse then this one. With the scrubs of NFL. Sacked so many times it's amazing he doesn't already have brain disease. You idiots amaze me.

Browns149

I agree they should have never drafted him, He never made it to the playoffs, he never made a pro-bowl. He was 22-37 as a starter. You can guess all you want about woulda coulda shoulda been better on a better team, but for the Browns, HE WAS A BUST

bringbackbrownie2

@browns149 said:

He never made it to the playoffs

Fail

DieHardBrownsFan

Tim Couch - a good man in a bad situation

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April 24, 2012

Al Behrman/Associated Press

Few fans recall that Couch led the Browns to the playoffs in 2002. For more NFL news and notes, see FOXSports.com's NFL page.

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Tim Couch isn’t afraid to look back. He might not always like what he sees, but he’s not afraid to look back and wonder -- at the craziness, difficulty and challenges he faced in a brief four-year career with the Cleveland Browns.

That career seems to symbolize the post-1999 Browns. Drafted first overall, Couch never lived up to the expectations he had for himself and the team. He came amidst much hoopla, but dealt with injury, defeat and wavering confidence during a four-year career that probably seemed like 40.

Couch now lives in Lexington with his wife Heather Kozar (the pride of Green, Ohio) and his two sons. He does TV work for FOX Sports South, and is still involved in the community. His most recent effort: Being placed on the bottle of a special edition of Maker’s Mark, with all proceeds going to the Gill Heart Institute in Kentucky.

As the first overall pick in the 1999 draft, and as the first overall pick of the expansion Browns, Couch was a good guy placed in bad situation. “I wanted to go to to Cleveland,” Couch said recently in a wide-ranging phone interview. “I knew it would be tough. But I didn’t know it was gonna be that tough.”

Couch was done in by expansion, his own struggles (to which he readily admits) and the impatience of the Browns. A team trying to find a quarterback spent his tenure trying to decide if he was the quarterback.

“When you’re in it, you think completely different,” Couch said. “But when you get removed from it you realize. That was almost an impossible situation to be successful in. It really was. We just didn’t have a lot of talent. Every week was a struggle. Then I had my problems. I kept getting hurt. It was one thing after another.”

Three of several tough moments illustrate Couch’s struggles.

He led the Browns to the playoffs in 2002, but broke his leg in the playoff-clinching finale and missed the only playoff game of the post-1999 era.

“That summed up a lot,” Couch said. “I worked my butt off and took a beating and finally got us to where we wanted to be and in the game I break my leg. When something great would happen … ”

Early in that season, Couch got hit in the head in a night-game loss to Baltimore, then bristled when he heard fans cheering as Kelly Holcomb was warming up because he thought they were cheering his injury. The Browns mistakenly let him talk to the media and could not contain the damage when he spoke through the wooziness.

“I shouldn’t have been speaking,” Couch said. “I had a concussion. If I’d have waited until the next day none of that would have happened.”

Finally, late in his last season in Cleveland, then-coach Butch Davis called him into his office and told Couch he was the quarterback for the future, that he could lead the Browns to the playoffs.

“Next thing I know they’re signing Jeff Garcia to a $25 million contract,” Couch said.

Davis spoke to Couch after a Monday night game when Holcomb threw two interceptions because receivers ran the wrong route. Both quarterbacks were pretty confused at that point.

“Kelly’s still a good friend,” Couch said. “Everything that happened in Cleveland, none of it was personal between he and I. Butch was the one jerking both of us around. We were just frustrated.”

Couch pointed out he was able to go start to finish in a season healthy only once, a sign of the beating he took. He was sacked a league-high 56 times as a rookie. He never played with a Pro Bowler or 1,000-yard rusher (the list of starters included Karim Abdul-Jabbar, Travis Prentice, Ben Gay, Errict Rhett and James Jackson) and had one 1,000-yard receiver (Kevin Johnson).

“A lot of guys have been placed in tough situations,” Couch said, “but I don’t think anyone’s been placed in a tougher one than I was placed in. It was an expansion team and there were a lot of expectations. I embraced that. That’s what I loved about the fans, and why I wanted to play there. But when it wasn’t happening as fast as people wanted, things got a little tough.”

Couch left college a much celebrated player. He was a high school phenom in football and basketball in Hyden, a town of 400 or so in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky (that now has a road called Tim Couch Pass). He stayed home to play for UK in Lexington, where he set every school passing record before leaving after his junior season.

He wanted to come to Cleveland, but the Browns debated right up until the last week about whether to take him or Akili Smith. They even went to the unusual point of loading a private plane with the owner, general manager, coach and nine other members of the organization to give Couch a rare, second private workout in Kentucky.

“I just thought it was part of the process,” Couch said of the exhausting workout when then-coach Chris Palmer admitted he tried to break Couch --- sort of like a racehorse. Couch passed, and became the No. 1 pick -- a reality that thrilled him.

“I just always wanted to go to Cleveland,” he said.

When he arrived, the town was off its rocker with excitement over the Browns return. Art Modell had moved his team three years earlier, and fans looked at the team’s return and its new stadium as a personal victory. The team spent lavishly on free agents, and cornerback Corey Fuller predicted the team would be the first expansion team to make the playoffs. Nobody argued.

The Browns plan called for Couch to sit and learn behind Ty Detmer, who started the opener on national television amidst Super Bowl-like fanfare. Pittsburgh used that celebration as motivation and humiliated the Browns 43-0. The next week coach Chris Palmer turned to Couch.

The Browns won two games that season -- the first on a Hail Mary pass in New Orleans, the second on a last-second field goal in Pittsburgh. Couch lost 359 yards in sacks while the team’s leading rusher gained 452. He finished the season watching the final game with an ankle injury.

“When I look back at that season now, I think the best thing would have been if I had sat for the year behind Ty and just learned,” Couch said. “It’s one thing if you’re a young Ben Roethlisberger who goes to such a veteran team. You can put a young quarterback in that situation. As an expansion team … it’s very similar to what happened with David Carr in Houston. It’s almost impossible for a guy to go in and start right away.

“I wish I had the opportunity to sit and learn that first year.”

Couch said every player believes he’s ready. He now knows he wasn’t.

“As I look back I certainly should not have played,” he said. “I wasn’t ready to handle the situation.”

Especially since he had had nothing but success through grade school, high school and college. When he and the team struggled, he started to doubt himself.

He started the first seven games of 2000, a season when the Browns began 2-1 but fell to 2-7. But in a Thursday practice a back missed a block on a pass-rush drill and a linebacker got too close to Couch. His follow through took his hand into the linebacker’s helmet. A broken thumb and surgery ended a season he thought was progressing fairly well.

“I was second in the league in completion percentage and playing well (1,483 yards, seven TDs),” he said. “Then I missed all those reps and games, and that set me back.”

Detmer had torn his achilles tendon in preseason, so the Browns were left with Doug Pederson and Spergon Wynn at quarterback. They staggered to the end with a 3-13 record, and after the season Carmen Policy fired Palmer and hired Davis.

“It was certainly unfair,” Couch said. “(Palmer) didn’t have a chance. He had all those rookies, and he was a rookie coach. Everybody panicked a little bit, but they never stopped to think Chris was in a bad situation too. I hated to see him go.”

Couch started 16 games for Davis in 2001, and the Browns started 6-4. But a late difficult schedule did them in, and they finished 7-9. Still, Couch looked on that season as a big positive, as he completed 60 percent of his passes for 3,040 yards with 17 touchdowns.

“That was the year I made it start to finish healthy,” he said. “I gained a lot. I believe that experience was the reason we ended up making the playoffs the next year.”

Couch missed the first three games of 2002 with an elbow injury. Holcomb stepped in and threw for 359 yards and four touchdowns in the “Dwayne Rudd” helmet-game loss to the Chiefs. The Browns won the next two, but Davis turned to Couch in week four. He threw two interceptions in a 16-13 loss to the Steelers.

After dropping to 2-4, the Browns and Couch rebounded to win seven of the final 11, including three of the last four, to reach the playoffs.

“I was just proud to make the playoffs with that team,” he said. “We really had no business making it.”

But in the finale against Atlanta, he broke his tibia.

“If that didn’t happen,” he said, “if that one play didn’t happen, I think I would still be playing with the Browns.”

He missed the playoff game, and Holcomb threw for 429 yards in a loss in Pittsburgh, a game the Browns gave away with several fourth-quarter gaffes -- by players and the coach. Davis let Couch and Holcomb compete the next training camp, and gave the job to Holcomb based on a “gut feeling.”

“I didn’t agree with the decision,” Couch said. “Kelly had a great game and I have a lot of respect for the way he played. But I felt it was still my job. Butch got a little influenced by the fans, because fans were loving Kelly after that 400-yard game. I didn’t feel I had done anything to lose (the job).”

Neither played well that season. Each started eight games, and the Browns went 5-11.

“We were both frustrated with that situation to be honest,” Couch said. “If one of us had a bad series or a bad game, he’d pull us out. You couldn’t get into any kind of rhythm.”

Despite that, Davis told Couch in December he was Davis’ guy for the future. But Davis then signed Garcia and released Couch. He caught on with Green Bay, but because he was with a new team he never admitted that he had arm and elbow pain. At one point he rolled over in bed and wasn’t able to pull up the covers. He eventually had to visit famed surgeon James Andrews, who found almost every serious injury he could -- a torn labrum. torn rotator cuff and a torn bicep. Basically Couch’s arm was shot.

Couch had reconstructive surgery, and tried but could not come back.

When he sees himself listed as one of the alltime draft busts, he shakes his head at being included with Ryan Leaf and JaMarcus Russell. Couch knows he struggled, but he also knows there wasn’t much of a team in place either. He remains the Browns alltime leader in completion percentage (minimum 600 attempts), an oddity given he was oft-criticized for being inaccurate.

“None of those busts took their team to the playoffs,” he said. “If people say it was a disappointment, I can understand that. I was hurt every year. I was on a bad team. I didn’t feel like I could show Cleveland what I was capable of boing. I wanted nothing more than to bring that city a championship, and that still burns.”

Disappointment is the one word Couch said he’d use to summarize his tenure in Cleveland.

Couch was drafted in a first round that saw five quarterbacks go in the first round. Donovan McNabb had a successful career with Philadelphia that included a Super Bowl appearance, Smith was a bust in Cincinnati, Cade McNown a bust in Chicago. But Daunte Culpepper took the Vikings to the NFC Championship Game. Couch’s one chance at a career was with Cleveland, where the misery index was almost as high as the losses and where the team is still trying to solve the quarterback situation.

“I do look at that sometimes, but it’s hard for me to get into that because it eats me up,” he said. “If I had been the 11th pick, I’d have gone to Minnesota where they had Randy Moss, Cris Carter and Robert Smith. You can’t tell me my career wouldn’t have been different. Or if I had been with Andy Reid and that offense, you can’t tell me it wouldn’t have been different.

“But I wouldn’t change it. I was at fault with the way things went too. I thought I could make it work there. I loved my time in Cleveland, I was proud to be a Brown and I still pull for them.”

Browns149

@bringbackbrownie2 said:

Fail

Kelley Holcomb won the clinching game and played in the Playoff game

bringbackbrownie2

@browns149 said:

Kelley Holcomb won the clinching game and played in the Playoff game

..because Couch was injured. Couch was still very responsible for getting the Browns into the playoffs that year.

Tim Couch Pulls Out

@browns149 said:

He never made it to the playoffs,

Swing and a miss.

Tim Couch Pulls Out

@browns149 said:

Kelley Holcomb won the clinching game and played in the Playoff game

Yeah, the 14 games before that didn't exist.

If at first you don't succeed...

Browns149

Looking at Tom couch's career stats I see NO PLAYOFF GAMES, therefor he never made it to the playoffs

DieHardBrownsFan

@browns149 said:

Looking at Tom couch's career stats I see NO PLAYOFF GAMES, therefor he never made it to the playoffs

You're a tool.

Browns149

@diehardbrownsfan said:

You're a tool.

Don't let the truth ruin your love for Timmy

Tim Couch Pulls Out

@browns149 said:

Looking at Tom couch's career stats I see NO PLAYOFF GAMES, therefor he never made it to the playoffs

Just because you're too much of a dolt to understand how things work doesn't make it untrue.

Browns149

@tim-couch-pulls-out said:

Just because you're too much of a dolt to understand how things work doesn't make it untrue.

I said he never made the playoffs. ANd he NEVER did. The team did without him, but HE didn't make it.

Also he WAS A BUST

since 1970 there have been 20 QB's picked #1

1970 Tery Bradshaw

1971 Jim Plunkett

1975 Steve Bartkowski

1983 John Elway

1987 Vinne Testaverde

1989 Trot Aikman

1990 Jeff George

1993 Drew Bledsoe

1998 Peyton MAnning

1999 Tim Couch

2001 Michael Vick

2002 David Carr

2003 Carson Palmer

2004 Eli Manning

2005 Alex Smith

2007 JaMarcus Russell

2009 Matthew Stafford

2010 Sam Bradford

2011 Cam Newton

2012 Andrew Luck

discounting the last 4, beacuse they haven't played long enough..( Although,Cam Newton and Matthew Stafford are already better then Couch ever was) The only one Tim Couch was better then was JaMarcus "Codeine syrup" Russell.

Tour2ma

Next to David Carr, Timmy may be the most ill-fated #1 QB in history.

But I was concerned about the wisdom of choosing him when our revival Head Coach (and QB guru) Palmer said, "Tim has a great future in the league... all we have to do is tweak his mechanics." Or words to the effect...

WTF??? An overall #1 and you see an issue with his mechanics??? I think Palmer screwed TC up big time...

==================================================

Meanwhile... back on topic...

Another audible Goose-egg today...

Three runs into 8-man fronts made it clear that Shurmur isn't ready to assign BW that responsibility.

bringbackbrownie2

@tour2ma said:

Next to David Carr, Timmy may be the most ill-fated #1 QB in history.

But I was concerned about the wisdom of choosing him when our revival Head Coach (and QB guru) Palmer said, "Tim has a great future in the league... all we have to do is tweak his mechanics." Or words to the effect...

WTF??? An overall #1 and you see an issue with his mechanics??? I think Palmer screwed TC up big time...

==================================================

Meanwhile... back on topic...

Another audible Goose-egg today...

Three runs into 8-man fronts made it clear that Shurmur isn't ready to assign BW that responsibility.

FYI audibles don't magically bring 1st downs. It seems pretty obvious but you seem to think otherwise. I'm sure Shurmur can look into the future and see that a play will get stuffed at the LOS and hates Weeden so much that he would rather gain no yardage than let him change the play...

The Gipper

@browns149 said:

He was the 1st pick in the draft and started only 59 games in 5 years, He had a qb rating of 75 and had more picks 67 then td's 64. I would say he wasn't as bad a Klingler or Akaili Smith. But to put up the aweful numbers he did, for a 1st OVERALL pick. HE WAS A BUST

Couch was NOT a "Bust". Not in the true sense of the word. Was he #1 overall pick HOF talent? No. But it was his draft status that he is measured by.

If he were measured by any other standard it could be said that he had a solid, though not spectacular career that was shortened by injury.

Anyone that doesn't recognize this fact is prejudiced. (Hell, he was better than anyone else the Browns have put out on that field in 13 years running now.)

The Gipper

@browns149 said:

I agree they should have never drafted him, He never made it to the playoffs, he never made a pro-bowl. He was 22-37 as a starter. You can guess all you want about woulda coulda shoulda been better on a better team, but for the Browns, HE WAS A BUST

First off, he DID take the team to the playoffs. Its just that he did not make the playoff game due to being injured the last game of the season.

Second.....this team was only a "team" on paper when he was taken.

He took it from a paper concept to a playoff team. 22-37 with an expansion team is pretty damn good. All other expansion teams in history did no better in their first few years, except the Jags and Panthers...but they were given extra special benefits that allowed them to do that. Benefits the Browns...or Texans, or Bucs, or Seahawks or Falcons or Saints etc. etc. did not have.

Browns149

@the-gipper said:

Couch was NOT a "Bust". Not in the true sense of the word. Was he #1 overall pick HOF talent? No. But it was his draft status that he is measured by.

If he were measured by any other standard it could be said that he had a solid, though not spectacular career that was shortened by injury.

Anyone that doesn't recognize this fact is prejudiced. (Hell, he was better than anyone else the Browns have put out on that field in 13 years running now.)

You are correct in saying He is measured by his draft status. Therfor he is a BUST. If he was drafted later in the 1st round he would just be another mediocre QB, but when you are the 1st overall pick and you were a mediocre QB THAT MAKES YOU A BUST

The Gipper

@browns149 said:

You are correct in saying He is measured by his draft status. Therfor he is a BUST. If he was drafted later in the 1st round he would just be another mediocre QB, but when you are the 1st overall pick and you were a mediocre QB THAT MAKES YOU A BUST

Your brain is a bust....because you are not able to rationally and logically apply any intellect into this situation.

I actually think what he did was quite....heroic.

Put him on any existing team and he may very well have been the success you would have expected him to be based on his draft status.

But remember....after he was taken as that #1 pick....he was the ONLY player the Cleveland Browns had (until they chose a few others later in that draft)

John Elway, Payton Manning, Troy Aikman....nobody who had ever been taken #1 overall came into a situation like he did (David Carr was the second one. All those people on tha #1 overall list you gave went to established teams Only Couch and Carr did not. They both suffered the same fate.

Compare him not to those guys but to the #1 picks in a franchises history.

Browns149

You can beleive what you want, just like I can beleive what I want. THE GUY WAS A BUST IMO. He was picked 1st overall and was mediocre. IMO that's a bust. In your opinion that's not a bust