Charlie Frye, Cleveland's third-round pick in the 2005 NFL Draft, has signed with the Oakland Raiders.
Frye spent the two previous seasons on Seattle as the third-string quarterback. He is Oakland's sixth quarterback, in a group that includes starter JaMarcus Russell, backup Jeff Garcia, veterans Andrew Walter and Bruce Gradkowski and rookie Danny Southwick.
Frye has the dubious distinction of being the only quarterback in league history who began the season as the starter and was traded after one game.
In his rookie year, Frye played in seven games, starting five. In 2006, Frye started 13 games and went 252-392 passing for 2,454 yards with 10 touchdowns and 17 interceptions.
The following year, in 2007, Frye and Derek Anderson were put in a quarterback competition. And how else do you decide the most important component of a multi-million dollar business? By flipping a coin, of course!
Frye won the coin flip, but quickly lost his job in the first game of the year, going 4-10 passing for 34 yards and an interception against Pittsbugh. He was traded to Seattle for a sixth-round pick. That selection ended up being defensive lineman Ahtyba Rubin, who is part of the teams front-line rotation.
Frye came to Cleveland with some fanfare after starring at the University of Akron and growing up a fan of Bernie Kosar.
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To be fair, the coin flip only was used to determine who would start one of the preseason games and it was already KNOWN that both QBs were going to play roughly about the same amount of time overall.
Frye was determined to be the starter over Anderson by the end of the entire preseason and not by coin flip. That story really did get blown way out of proportion at the time and people still refer back to it now for some odd reason.
Hopefully Frye will make the active roster in Oakland, but really is he any better off as the #3 QB there than last year in Seattle? At least Seattle had the potential to have a halfway decent O-line going into last season, something Frye never had the luxury of in his Cleveland years.