Written by Thomas Moore

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The Cleveland Browns severed another link to the Randy Lerner & Mike Holmgren era on Monday, trading third-string quarterback Colt McCoy to the San Francisco 49ers.

Along with McCoy the Browns threw in their sixth-round selection (173rd) in this month’s NFL Draft. In return they get San Francisco’s fifth- and seventh-round draft picks (numbers 164 and 227, for those of you keeping score at home).

Even by Cleveland standards, McCoy’s story was a strange one.

Drafted in the third round of the 2010 draft after a highly successful career at Texas and because Holmgren saw something in him, McCoy was slated to sit on the bench his rookie year and learn the NFL game. That all fell apart when Jake Delhomme and Seneca Wallace were sidelined with high ankle sprains – the injury of the year in 2010 for the Browns.

After not embarrassing himself in his first NFL start in Pittsburgh, McCoy improbably led the Browns to wins over New Orleans and New England. In the process McCoy led people who should know better to believe that not only did the Browns have an actual NFL quarterback, but also an NFL head coach in Eric Mangini. (A 2-6 finish to the season cleared up those misconceptions about Mangini; it would take another year for the same to happen to McCoy).

McCoy made 13 starts in 2011 before his season was ended by a cheap shot from Pittsburgh’s James Harrison during a Thursday night game. That led to much criticism of former Browns coach Pat Shurmur and the team’s medical staff after McCoy was allowed to re-enter the game with an undiagnosed concussion.

Nobody complained louder than Brad McCoy, Colt’s dad, who turned into a stage parent from Toddlers & Tiaras as he ranted to the media.

McCoy and Browns fans didn’t know it at the time, but that night in Pittsburgh was the last game with McCoy as the undisputed starting quarterback. Once the Browns selected Brandon Weeded in the first round of the 2012 NFL Draft, it was clear that McCoy was going to be on the bench barring an injury to Weeden.

We never pro-McCoy or anti-McCoy; while he was part of the problem in 2010 and 2011, he was never 100 percent of the problem. All we ever wanted the team to do was give him a legitimate chance so they could be sure if he was a viable NFL quarterback or not. And while we’re sure that there are still Browns fans out there who think McCoy just “never got a chance,” that’s simply not the case.

McCoy made 21 starts for the Browns more than enough time for the Browns to realize he is not starting material. Overall with the Browns, McCoy went 6-15 as a starter and threw for 4,388 yards, 21 touchdowns and 20 interceptions.

If McCoy was ever going to see any success as an NFL starter it would have come in Shurmur’s version of the West Coast offense. Once the Browns brought in Norv Turner’s offense, with his love of the vertical passing game, it became clear that McCoy was no longer a fit for Cleveland, even as a backup.

Knowing all that, it is kind of surprising that the Browns were able to get anything for McCoy – especially from San Francisco. As miscast as Weeden was in Shurmur’s offense, it’s hard to look at McCoy and see him being able to duplicate anything that current San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick does.

Even other NFL players were surprised, with Seattle safety Earl Thomas reportedly Tweeting that the trade must be “a april fools joke.”

Of course, we currently live in a world where the Oakland Raiders willingly give up two draft picks for quarterback Matt Flynn, who has basically has one NFL game on his resume, so anything is possible. And it will be the Browns luck that the 49ers will somehow figure out how to make McCoy a good quarterback, although we won’t be holding our breath.

As for McCoy, he always seemed to just want to go about his business and try to improve his game.

“I know my job is to go out there and play and give our team the best opportunity to win,” McCoy said at one point during the 2011 season. “If you start to think about what people are writing or what somebody says, that just creates things in your mind that don’t need to be in there. I’m going to give it my all every week, in practice, in meetings and in the games. If you do that, then good things are going to happen. I think we need to focus on our team and give ourselves the best chance to win.”

We never wanted to see McCoy fail – after all, if someone wears a uniform that says Cleveland on it we want to see him succeed. But once it became obvious that wasn’t going to happen with McCoy, moving on was probably the best course of action for everyone involved.