Fair competition? Really? 

Colt McCoy is being played by the hierarchy of the Browns and he knows it. Right now, he’s being a good soldier.

At the current full-team OTAs bring conducted by the Browns, the young quarterback is saying all the right things even though he knows what will soon unfold.

He has been told there will be an open competition for the starting quarterback job this season. After drafting Brandon Weeden, the Browns, according to McCoy, told him to “just come in here and compete.”

McCoy says that’s what he wanted to hear. “As a competitor, that’s all you need to hear,” he told reporters Tuesday. “As long as I’m given an opportunity to compete, it’s a fair competition.”

But he has to know this is nothing more than a sham. He has to know Weeden will be given every opportunity to win the job and he and Seneca Wallace will just be bystanders as they watch that little scenario unfold.

It’s not going to be fair at all. You don’t draft a soon-to-be 29-year-old quarterback who reinvented himself after a failed professional baseball career and assign him to clipboard patrol.

McCoy is no dummy. Pressed by the media to respond to an ESPN report that indicated the Browns told him they wouldn’t take a quarterback in the first round of the college draft, he demurred.

“I don’t want to get onto that he-said, she-said stuff,” he said. “I’m here, I’m excited to be here and we had a great first day of OTAs.”

Brave front from McCoy, who deserves much better treatment from his front office than he has received. What else could he say after being hung out to dry by his bosses?

Sure, he could lash out and call them what they are: a bunch of prevaricators. They have no more intention of giving him a fair shot at a winning a starting job than Wallace. It’s not going to happen.

Weeden will get the majority of snaps once training camp begins in late July. That’s the way it should be. That’s the way it has to be if the Browns are going to make any noise in the AFC North this season.

And when it becomes apparent that the open competition is not really open, McCoy, if he’s still with the club, might not be so diplomatic. He probably will shed the good-soldier garb for something much more dramatic.

For the time being, though, he’s trying to cool down what many fans and members of the media (including yours truly) consider a hot button. It could be because he hopes there is another team out there that might want to take a chance with him.

Continue playing the good soldier is the correct path to take. Don’t become the center of attention in a negative way. Deflect all the controversy in another direction. That’s the smart thing to do.

It would be so tempting to lash out at Mike Holmgren and Tom Heckert Jr.  But sometimes, you have to remain above the fray. This is one of those times and McCoy will be better off for it even though he knows fair competition will have nothing to do with it.