Tim Couch...I rarely catch Cleveland's games and I can't recall if I have seen a full game Couch has played in, however, he has some promising stats. For his career, Couch has completed 59.8% of his passes, and in his last two full seasons has the starter (2001 and 2002), he completed 60.7% of his passes. He is better than Donovan McNabb's 57.0% career completion percentage, and McNabb has never completed more than 58.4% of his passes in a single season.

Now that the good part is out of the way, Cleveland is unloading Couch and Butch Davis has given up on him because he is poor at making decisions and he throws too many interceptions. Brett Favre throws a lot of interceptions, but his career TD to INT ratio is 1.7 to 1, while Couch is an awful 0.95 to 1. Couch's replacement in Cleveland, Jeff Garcia, has an outstanding career 2 to 1 ratio while McNabb is Favre-like at 1.8 to 1. Couch has an unimpressive 6.49 yards per attempt for his career, far below Favre (7.06) and Garcia (6.95), but actually better than McNabb (6.16). There is enough past performance and future potential in Couch to bring him in as backup for the right price.

The Packers brought in Akili Smith in 2003, so Couch would continue the Packers' annual attempt to rehab a quarterback bust from the 1999 draft (apparently Cade McNown's turn is in 2005). Couch's agent is probably wary that the Packers gave up on Smith last preseason, but Couch has shown much more potential than Smith ever showed. Couch would probably like a starting job, or the opportunity to compete for a starting job, but there doesn't appear to be any opportunities in the NFL. Maybe after minicamp, Arizona, Baltimore, Buffalo, Chicago, Miami, NY Giants, Oakland (if Rich Gannon isn't healthy), Pittsburgh, or San Diego may decide they need some competition at quarterback, but after Eli Manning, Philip Rivers, and Ben Roethlisberger are drafted, its likely three of those teams won't consider Couch. If the Packers are the best Couch can do in 2004 and the Packers are interested, then Couch might be well off to come to Green Bay and see if he can get some of the QB pixie dust off of Favre that gave life to the careers of Mark Brunell and Aaron Brooks.