Walk with me on this Cleveland Browns quarterback analogy.
It’s 7 PM. You just got home from a long day at work. To say this day at work was more stressful than the previous day is an understatement. Once you clock out, the main focus you have is getting home. Once you get home, you are attempting to decompress, but then a realization pops up. You haven’t made a decision on what you are going to get for dinner. You forgot to take something out of your freezer, the leftovers from the previous two nights
are still there, the fast food place down the street is open, but you are having second-guesses due to the previous experiences being less than ideal.
The dinner options aren’t appealing, but you have to pick something or not eat for the night.
In the case of the Browns, the team doesn’t have a QB1 on its roster. The options aren’t appealing, and no one knows who is going to win the job. Thankfully, unlike the dinner analogy, no decision needs to be made today.
The QB room, as it stands, is still the same as it was last season. Head coach Todd Monken has emphasized that this will be an open competition for the starting job, which was expected, but he has not committed to who the starting QB is going into offseason workouts.
Second-year pro Shedeur Sanders is likely going to get first crack at the starting gig, considering how the rest of the room performed last season. Dillon Gabriel is a long shot, and his tape wasn’t encouraging, and Deshaun Watson sat out the entire season; it’s not a shocker that Sanders will be getting his shot. Going back to the dinner examples used earlier, let us apply those options to the current quarterback room.
Browns QB roster
It might seem harsh, but Gabriel has zero shot of competing for the starting job. His limitations athletically and the team not including him in any plans, at least verbally, going forward, tells you how they feel about him. In this case, he’s the frozen food in the freezer you thought about taking out but you end up tossing away a few weeks later.
Sanders is coming off a less-than-ideal rookie campaign. The film showed more negatives than positives. Sanders can improve with a new supporting cast, but it’s not a guarantee that it will work to his benefit. Learning a new offense and trying to play a style that doesn’t suit him (at least based on Monken’s history) isn’t ideal. Sanders is the dinner leftovers you made a few days ago. The taste isn’t something to write home about, but it’s the only thing in the house you are willing to eat.
Then we have Watson, who is the lone veteran in this QB room, but he hasn’t played since 2023, which was his worst year as a pro. The long layoff, along with the Achilles injury and downward trajectory athletically, has fans wondering why the team would entertain the possibility of starting him. The only way Watson wins the starting job is if Sanders doesn’t show the necessary improvement to take the job. Watson is the fast food place down the street, you don’t necessarily want to go to again because the past two experiences have been bad. However, you would only consider that fast food place because you don’t want to eat dinner leftovers, so it’s viewed as a last resort.
It’s clear that the Browns don’t have a for-sure starting quarterback on their roster. Gabriel is a career backup, Sanders is more of a project than people want to admit, and Watson hasn’t been the QB that the team traded for.
Handing Sanders the starting job and not allowing an open competition would’ve been a disservice to not only the team but to Sanders. Sanders’s play last year didn’t justify him being given the QB1 title starting out. Would the team be comfortable going back to Watson? Maybe. Watson is trying to salvage his career, knowing he is unlikely to get another job in the NFL again due to the off-the-field allegations and his play not being what it used to be.
There is a lot of uncertainty in the QB room in Cleveland, and it’s not an ideal situation to be in.
