CHICAGO — Case Keenum is well aware of the jersey — the infamous, fan-altered jersey of former Cleveland Browns quarterback Tim Couch with a long list of his successors under his nameplate.
Keenum should know it. He’s on it.
“I’ve seen that shirt,” said Keenum, who played for the Browns from 2020-21 and joined the Bears as a free agent in April. “I think I’m probably the only undefeated quarterback on that list. … Minimum two games, right?”
It’s true. Keenum started two games in 2021 and won both, but he knows that’s not what the spirit of the jersey is all about.
It’s a meme about futility.
It’s about a franchise’s exhaustive yet fruitless search for a solution at the game’s most important position.
“Cleveland is its own little entity,” Keenum said. “It’s got this blue-collar, not-ever-given-anything, had-to-earn-everything-it’s-gotten, been-overlooked, kind-of-little-brother-type mentality. I’ve really had that type of time my whole life, my whole career. So being able to share it with a group of people in a city like that I really enjoyed.
“You know, you could probably make those types of shirts at a lot of different places.”
To his point, a Bears fan could’ve made a Cade McNown jersey with all of his successors.
The Browns have had 42 quarterbacks start at least one game since they were reinstated (after a three-year absence) in 1999, including No. 1 pick Couch. The Bears have had 30 quarterbacks make at least one start since they drafted McNown at No. 12 that same year.
It’s a trauma bond for two fan bases.
Perhaps Bears and visiting Browns fans can discuss it during Sunday’s game when they’re huddled together for warmth amid subzero wind chills at Soldier Field.
The numbers
The Browns have had a staggering number of starters since ‘99.
The full list, in alphabetical order, includes: Derek Anderson, Jacoby Brissett, Jason Campbell, Tim Couch, Austin Davis, Jake Delhomme, Ty Detmer, Trent Dilfer, Ken Dorsey, Jeff Driskel, Joe Flacco, Charlie Frye, Dillon Gabriel, Jeff Garcia, Bruce Gradkowski, Robert Griffin III, Kevin Hogan, Kelly Holcomb, Brian Hoyer, Case Keenum, Cody Kessler, DeShone Kizer, Thaddeus Lewis, Johnny Manziel, Baker Mayfield, Josh McCown, Luke McCown, Colt McCoy, Nick Mullens, Doug Pederson, Brady Quinn, Shedeur Sanders, Connor Shaw, Tyrod Taylor, Dorian Thompson-Robinson, P.J. Walker, Seneca Wallace, Deshaun Watson, Brandon Weeden, Jameis Winston, Spergon Wynn and Bailey Zappe.
Here’s the Bears’ list: Tyson Bagent, Matt Barkley, Henry Burris, Jason Campbell, Chris Chandler, Jimmy Clausen, Todd Collins, Jay Cutler, Andy Dalton, Chase Daniel, Justin Fields, Nick Foles, Mike Glennon, Brian Griese, Rex Grossman, Caleb Hanie, Brian Hoyer, Chad Hutchinson, Craig Krenzel, Shane Matthews, Josh McCown, Cade McNown, Jim Miller, Kyle Orton, Nathan Peterman, Jonathan Quinn, Trevor Siemian, Kordell Stewart, Mitch Trubisky and Caleb Williams.
In 27 years, the Browns have averaged about 1 1/2 quarterback starters per season, but they outdid themselves in 2023 with five: Driskel, Flacco, Thompson-Robinson, Walker and Watson.
Of course, injuries played a factor in the number of starters, as it does with several teams most seasons.
The Browns have had 20 quarterbacks start at least eight games since 1999, the most in the league.
The Bears have had only 11 make eight starts, about average in the league, but they have had 23 make at least four starts, tied for the highest in that span.
However you dissect the numbers, various Bears and Browns front offices have spent a lot of man hours trying to find a long-term solution to their quarterback quandaries, often to no avail.
“You look at quarterback in general, I think it’s probably the toughest, most scrutinized, most unique position in all of sports — we get the ball in our hands every play,” said Keenum, 37, who’s on his ninth team in his 14th season. “No one position in all sports relies more on their team and the entire building, and no other position in all sports has the entire team and the building relying on them.”
Keenum was the primary backup for Mayfield, who eventually joined Couch, Manziel, Quinn and Weeden among Browns first-round quarterbacks who didn’t pan out for them (though Mayfield has found success with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers).
“When you put that type of expectations and stress and pressure on a kid sometimes, that’s not a recipe for success if you’re not making decisions at a very high level based on how it affects that kid,” Keenum said.
He praised Bears coach Ben Johnson in that regard.
“Ben’s done an incredible job — every decision he’s made (has been) with everybody in the building in mind, specifically our quarterback,” Keenum said. “It’s not just him, it’s getting the entire building on it. That’s one thing that you can see that’s going on with Caleb Williams.”
The psyche
George Bozeka is president of the Pro Football Researchers Association (PFRA) and author of several NFL-related books and articles.
His son, Jon Bozeka, is a longtime broadcaster in Northeast Ohio who covers the Browns for Infinity Sports Network and Sirius XM.
In their own ways, they’ve both spent years studying their hometown Browns and they’re both left scratching their heads.
“I think it’s been a huge source of frustration for Browns fans,” George Bozeka said about the team’s quarterback search. “One theory that I have, and I think Jon shares this with me, is that in the modern NFL, they don’t really develop quarterbacks like they used to historically.
“When I was younger, in the ’60s and ’70s, they always said it took about three to five years to develop a quarterback. Now it’s all about instant gratification. A quarterback is drafted high, they expect him to go in and excel immediately. And I think that’s been part of the problem for the Browns.
“They’ve had quarterbacks that have, you know, done well for short periods of time, like for a season, and then they come back to earth and the mediocrity sets in.”
Jon Bozeka said Browns fans would get their hopes up — like during Derek Anderson’s Pro Bowl season in 2007 — only to come crashing down a year or two later. Rinse and repeat with Mayfield.
“I can’t even begin to tell you the excitement when Joe Flacco led the Browns to the playoffs, like, two years ago, you would have thought Joe Flacco was the second coming of Otto Graham around here,” Jon Bozeka said. “People were making T-shirts. There was excitement. … That season, that moment for Browns fans was so unique here that everybody wanted that to work again this year, and it just didn’t.”
Bears fans have ridden similar waves with Trubisky and Fields.
Joe Ziemba, PFRA member and author of “Bears vs. Cardinals: The NFL’s Oldest Rivalry” and other Chicago-related books, can testify to what many Bears fans felt when Fields was selected with the 11th pick in 2021.
“I remember even where I was, I was in an Ace Hardware store, and someone told me the Bears are going to get Fields,” he said. “I said, ‘You’re kidding.’ I’ve seen him in college going nuts at Ohio State.”
Two seasons later Fields and the Bears parted ways.
“I think the system, I think the staff let him down a little bit in terms of his developing further,” Ziemba said
Jon Bozeka said of Trubisky, Fields’ predecessor and the No. 2 pick in 2017: “People here wanted him really badly. He’s a local kid. He’s a Mentor (Ohio) kid.”
There’s still time for Trubisky, who’s in his second season in Buffalo, to be added to that Browns jersey.
The original jersey was the brainchild of Cleveland-based ad agency owner Tim Brokaw, who retired it after 24 names in 2016, when the Cavaliers won the NBA championship.
But it has been resurrected in various forms, handmade or Photoshopped, with some gaining similar notoriety.
“Just because the list is 42, I think we mentally all have that image in our head,” Jon said.
George Bozeka believes both Chicago and Cleveland have a “bruised” psyche when it comes to this subject because of their storied histories that predate the 1970 merger.
“I think it’s painful for the fan bases to constantly go through this,” he said. “There’s more expectation. I think that’s why there’s more impatience.”
Ziemba said Bears fans focus on the modern quarterback carousel and the lack of a 4,000-yard passer in their history but forget about the greats of yesteryear.
“You had somebody like Ed Brown in the ’50s, but no one’s ever heard of Ed Brown, and he probably started more games (66) than anybody,” he said, with the exception of Jay Cutler (102).
“I’m always looking at someone like Sid Luckman, who I still consider the best quarterback in Bears history. “(Bears founder George) Halas had this keen eye for selecting guys, and Luckman wasn’t even a quarterback at Columbia. But since Halas felt that as a tailback, he could fit in with the C formation, he picked him up on a last minute trade with Pittsburgh and added him.
“Of course he’s a Hall of Famer and still holds a lot of the records.”
The Bozekas hold up Graham — a three-time NFL champion — as one of the league’s all-time greats, though they acknowledge fans hang their hat on the fact the Bears have had two quarterbacks lead them to a Super Bowl and one won.
“Even though the Bears haven’t done it since ’85 … Cleveland has so consistently experienced that heartbreak,” Jon Bozeka said. “It’s painful that they can’t get the position that’s the most important position in sports right.”
The franchise
Caleb Williams’ 57.8% completion percentage has invited a bit of scrutiny, but it’s notable that Luckman, passing pioneer though he was, had just a 51.8% career completion percentage.
“And yet he’s considered the dominant guy,” Ziemba said. “But the game was different, and the strategies were different.”
The point is, numbers don’t necessarily make a franchise quarterback. Wins do.
The question for both the Bears and Browns is: Can Williams and Shedeur Sanders become those players?
Recently, Ben Johnson said to throw out the stats when it comes to Williams, who came with Sears Tower-high expectations when he was drafted at No. 1 in 2024.
At this early stage of building a franchise quarterback, only the process and the mindset matter.
“It’s the coachability aspect of it,” Johnson said. “He’s doing a really good job right now of being critical of himself. We see it the same way. We’ll watch tape together and (he says), ‘I’ve got to be better there.’
“Even the walk-through. I mean, we just had a walk-through and he’s a little pissed off walking off. He’s like, ‘I had two in there that I could’ve gotten a little bit cleaner’ in a walk-through setting. Well, we just installed the play, so that’s natural. When he’s critical of himself and he’s taking to coaching, I know good things are coming down the horizon.”
Williams said he and his coach talk every day about everything, from family to football.
And that includes goals and expectations.
“The playoff mentality, the championship mentality, that’s where we want to be,” Williams said. That’s where you want to be every year. … Whether it’s your first year or 10th year, you don’t go into a year not thinking about that.
“That’s one. And then managing those expectations, managing actually being possibly in that position, that’s going to take experience, that’s going to take trusting in him, that’s going to take us just trusting the process.”
Browns coach Kevin Stefanski likes what he has seen of Williams.
“He’s a really, really good young player,” Stefanski said. “He can make a ton of plays both on schedule and off schedule, has elite arm talent to throw the ball around the field.
“And … he’s very elusive, extremely elusive. He can get out of the pocket to the left, to the right, vertical in the pocket. He’s a hard guy to bring down and that adds another element to their team.”
Sanders’ path has been a bit more arduous than Williams’.
He was a projected first- or second-rounder but fell to the fifth and suddenly found himself fourth on the depth chart behind Flacco, Kenny Pickett and fellow rookie Dillon Gabriel, who was drafted in the third round.
There had been murmurs through the preseason and regular season about why Sanders hadn’t gotten more first-team reps or a chance to start, but Sanders finally got his first start Nov. 23, a 24-10 win over the Las Vegas Raiders.
Last week, he threw for 364 yards and produced four total touchdowns in his third start, a 31-29 loss to the Tennessee Titans.
Bears defensive coordinator Dennis Allen hadn’t seen a lot of tape on Sanders before this season but said: “I see a guy that plays with a little bit of a swagger. He’s got a little moxie to him. I think he brings a little bit of excitement to that football team.”
And yet, there are still questions about whether he’ll be in Cleveland long term.
“I just go here, enjoy my day, work hard, do everything I can,” Sanders said. “And if I’m here, I’m here. If I’m not, I’m not. Like it’s nothing in my control. So, I try to control what I can control. That’s going out there and making the right reads, going out there doing the right things, being the person I am. And things will fall how they are supposed to.”
Even if it’s lip service, Stefanski seems compelled to include Gabriel in the conversation about Sanders’ progress, lest he fuel more chatter about the Browns’ muddy quarterback vision.
“I don’t think you can quantify development,” Stefanski said. “With all of our players, we have a development plan that we feel strongly about. … What’s great about our young class, Shedeur, in this case our entire rookie class, is these guys want to get better.”
The Browns have at least committed to starting Sanders the rest of the season.
Starter or benchwarmer, solution or temporary fix, if Sanders harbors any concerns about his NFL future, he’s not showing it at the podium.
“I’m comfortable being uncomfortable,” he said. “You’ve got to understand, that’s just the situation I’m in, and I’m fine with that. I love that.”
Come Sunday at noon, Williams and Sanders will be focused on the game and little else. Realistically, Williams and the Bears need this win against the 3-10 Browns to maintain control of their playoff hunt.
For Sanders, it’s a four-game audition.
Two years ago, Williams and Sanders traded 11 total touchdowns between them when Williams’ USC Trojans defeated Sanders’ Colorado Buffaloes 48-41.
“It was a good atmosphere, a good game,” Williams said this week. “We ended up coming out with the victory, and Shedeur was a hell of a player.”
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