Sam Abood
Oct 31, 2023
The Arizona Cardinals enter their week 9 matchup against the Cleveland Browns riding a 5-game losing streak and down to their 3rd string quarterback, Clayton Tune, after trading Josh Dobbs to the Minnesota Vikings on Tuesday.
Dobbs will now be faced with the challenge of learning his 3rd offense this season after being traded from the Browns to the Cardinals just before the season started.
With Kyler Murray rumored to return from his ACL injury any week now, Arizona decided Dobbs was expendable and traded him to Minnesota for a 6th round pick.
Looking back at the initial trade between the Browns and Cardinals after 8 weeks, an argument can be made that it was a loss for both teams.
Dobbs led the Cardinals to a 1-7 record while averaging just under 200 yards a game with a QBR of 46.6, good for 19th in the league. Those numbers leave a lot to be desired, but the Browns sure could have used that production.
Filling in for an injured Deshaun Watson, rookie Dorian Thompson-Robinson had a disastrous debut in Week 4 when he was thrust into action against a vaunted Ravens defense. The next week he was replaced by PJ Walker who has averaged 206 yards per game with a QBR of 25.3 in his 3 starts with the team.
How might things have gone for Cleveland if they held onto Dobbs? No one really knows but looking at his QBR compared to Thompson-Robinson’s and Walker’s, I imagine the Browns might have won a few more games.
Cleveland enjoys a measly 169 days of sunshine compared to 299 days a year in Phoenix. Cleveland was once a proud, blue collar steel town but is now struggling with a declining population and scarcity of job opportunities. Maricopa, representative of the whole city of Phoenix, is one of the fastest growing cities in the country.
But when it comes to the NFL, both teams and cities share the heartbreak and misery that comes along with years of losing. Both teams head into Week 9 in similar predicaments, waiting for their franchise quarterbacks to return from injury and prove that they are deserving of their massive contracts. Until then, it’s a battle of the 3rd string quarterbacks in Cleveland on Sunday.
StraightSports 