The Cleveland Browns stunned the soccer group once they used the 2025 NFL Draft so as to add rookie quarterbacks Dillon Gabriel (3rd around, select No. 94) and Shedeur Sanders (5th around, select No. 144) to a room already occupied via veteran Joe Flacco and 2022 first-round variety Kenny Pickett.
One unnamed NFC government not too long ago advised Jori Epstein of Yahoo Sports that Sanders is “way more talented” than Gabriel and “has a chance to end up being [Cleveland’s] starter.”
However, Browns insider Mary Kay Cabot of the Cleveland Plain Dealer defined in a work revealed Tuesday why she’s satisfied “Pickett would be the Browns’ QB1” if the season started this weekend.
“He was the first move the Browns made at the start of the league year in March, trading quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson and a fifth-round pick to the Eagles in exchange,” Cabot wrote about Cleveland obtaining Pickett. “…The Browns viewed Pickett as a former first-round pick who showed good promise early on but was thrust into a challenging situation. He had an embattled offensive coordinator in Matt Canada, who was fired in November of Pickett’s second season, and two mercurial receivers in George Pickens and Diontae Johnson.”
Since the 2023 season, Johnson apparently has fallen out of style with training staffs hired via the Steelers, Carolina Panthers, Baltimore Ravens (two times) and Houston Texans. Meanwhile, Pickens has mechanically sparked drama all over his Pittsburgh tenure, which started when the membership made him a second-round draft select within the spring of 2022.
As for Pickett, the Steelers gave up on him after simply two years. Across 24 begins and 25 overall regular-season appearances with Pittsburgh, he went 14-10 with 13 landing passes and 13 interceptions. He spent nearly all of closing season serving as a backup for the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles.
“The Browns like that Pickett makes good decisions, doesn’t turn the ball over much and has the upside to make more big plays than he has, especially in this quarterback-friendly West Coast scheme,” Cabot added.
As of Wednesday morning, FanDuel Sportsbook indexed Flacco because the having a bet favourite at +116 odds to be Cleveland’s Week 1 starter. It’s believed the Browns may just industry or free up both Flacco or Pickett if Gabriel or Sanders appears to be like in a position to stand reside defenses in significant video games via the top of the preseason.
As for Sanders, some scouts and coaches consider he will be little greater than “a backup at best” within the NFL for causes that experience not anything to do with how he allegedly treated the predraft procedure. In a special Cleveland Plain Dealer article revealed on Wednesday, Lance Reisland famous that Sanders “needs to improve his pocket awareness and decision-making under pressure” as a result of “drifting backward when under pressure is something Sanders struggles with.”
Reisland discussed that Cleveland’s quarterback room is extra “competitive” than “overcrowded” forward of obligatory minicamp. It appears like some suppose the fight for Cleveland’s beginning task may just come all the way down to a Pickett-versus-Sanders showdown.