It's been nearly a month since the Suck for Luck campaign was analyzed here because two teams have clearly distanced themselves from the rest of the candidates. (Also, who isn't talking about Andrew Luck these days? Sheesh)
At the beginning of the season, I tabbed the following 12 teams as contenders for the Stanford quarterback: Buffalo Bills, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, Dallas Cowboys, Denver Broncos, Indianapolis Colts, Kansas City Chiefs, Miami Dolphins, Oakland Raiders, San Francisco 49ers, Seattle Seahawks, Washington Redskins.
Lets do a quick reset on these teams, first looking at the obvious non-factors. The Bills, Bengals, Chiefs, Cowboys (a long shot to begin with) and 49ers have all played themselves out of the running for various reasons.
The current leading contenders after nine weeks of games are the winless Colts and Dolphins. With an opponents combined winning percentage of .571, Miami faces a much harder schedule the rest of the season. The combined winning percentage for the Colts is .483. Really, it's hard to find a win on the Dolphins' schedule. Heck, they even lost to Tim Tebow and the Broncos.
Resetting the Suck for Luck campaign
Speaking of those Broncos, they remain an outside contender. Tebow’s struggles have been widely discussed and backups
and
are free agents after the season. The other outside contenders, the Seahawks and
, have two wins and the Redskins have three. The Browns, despite having three wins, are closer than those teams. The Browns are only being considered because they have an extra first-round pick in 2012 that could be used in a trade. That’s important if the single-win
end up with the first pick. The Rams could trade away the picks or second-year starter
. Even trading for Bradford would be an upgrade for the Browns.
At this point, though, discussion of a trade involving the Rams and Browns is a little fruitless (though our pals at Turf Show Times expertly analyzed it here).
has been bad in Cleveland, Bradford is easier to trade after his first two rookie contact years and his old offensive coordinator, Pat Shurmur, is the Browns head coach. Still, it’s unlikely. It sure makes for a fun storyline to speculate on, though.
