That Smashmouth Just Got More Exotic!
By 
The blackballing of Colin Kaepernick has officially landed somewhere beyond self-parody, as the Titans have signed the least valuable player selected by the Cleveland Browns in the first round of the 2012 draft:
The Tennessee Titans have reportedly found a new quarterback to replace an injured Marcus Mariota, and it’s former 28-year-old rookie Brandon Weeden, a.k.a. the most hilarious Cleveland Browns draft pick ever, a.k.a. the guy last seen as a third-stringer behind Tom Savage and Brock Osweiler.
We’ve been through Kapernick’s credentials, so lets just talk about Weeden. In his two seasons as a starter in Cleveland, his adjusted QB ratings (100 being the league average, 85 Tim Tebow’s year as a starter) were 84 and 78. His rating looks superficially better in Dallas, but only because Garrett constructed a game plan on the assumption that his QB couldn’t make throws — he got only 7 adjusted y/a despite an obviously unsustainable 72% completion rate. His lifetime QB rating is 76, Kaepernick’s is 88.9. And Weeden, of course, is 4 years older. Weeden is not remotely an NFL caliber QB, and to make matters more ridiculous as a classic tall immobile pocket passer he’s obviously much less well-suited to a system designed for Mariota than Kaepernick is.
Wait — it gets better. The Titans also took a look at some other options:
Weeden, seen above getting sacked by the American flag, started 20 games for the Browns in 2012 and 2013, eventually losing the starting role to Jason Campbell. Now 33 years old, he reportedly won a Titans contractover such luminaries as Matt Barkley, Matt McGloin, and T.J. Yates.
Barkley has 6 career starts with a AB rating of 63.7. McGloin has 7 career starts with a rating of 75.3. Yates has 7 starts with a rating of 72.8. To see a bigger parade of stiffs you’d have to visit the Nashville morgue. And we’re not talking about a tanking team here, but one that fully expected to win the division. Kaepernick not having a job is 100% politics, 0% football, the end.
In related news, I remain extremely skeptical that Mike Mularkey (whose lifetime record after getting beaten senseless by Mr. Bill O’Brien and the Houston Texans stands at 29-48) and the partially decomposed corpse of Dick LeBeau are the coaches to turn the Titans into a contender.