Browns coach Rob Chudzinski said this week that there is a “close” competition for the starting quarterback job between Brandon Weeden and Jason Campbell, a point which seemed to run counter to the way things have actually been playing out in Cleveland.
Weeden has been running with the ones for quite a while now and there hasn’t been any groundswell of support for Campbell to nudge him out of the way coming out of Cleveland. It doesn’t appear one is about to start either. Left tackle Joe Thomas has a different vantage point on the quarterbacks than his coach and he doesn’t sound like a man who sees a close competition playing out between the guys he’s protecting.
“Brandon’s taking all the first-team reps, so take it for what that is,” Thomas said, via Nate Ulrich of the Akron Beacon Journal. “I don’t know. I’m not evaluating the quarterbacks. I think Jason’s had a great camp, so I wouldn’t necessarily say that they’re not both playing well because they both are. So I don’t know how you evaluate which quarterback is going to be the starter or not. But, I mean, I’ve got eyes just like everybody else does, and Brandon’s taken all the first reps.”
If Campbell had a real chance at winding up as the starter come Week One, Weeden wouldn’t be taking all the first-team reps because the team would want to see whether Campbell could do things that Weeden can’t do. The starters are expected to play as much as a half against the Lions this week and it will be even harder to believe Chudzinski’s take on the competition is anything but motivational if Weeden gets all that time.