When the Browns selected quarterback Shedeur Sanders with the 144th pick in the 2025 draft, they added a fifth player to their quarterback depth chart.
When will Sanders become QB1?
It’s a question that will hover over the franchise — and will be raised repeatedly in questions posed to coaches, executives, and players — until it happens.
First, let’s use a process of elimination. It’s highly unlikely that quarterback Deshaun Watson will play in 2025. He’ll enter training camp on the Physically Unable to Perform list after suffering two tears of the Achilles tendon. Given that the Browns can recover millions in cash and cap space via the insurance policy they purchased under Watson’s contract, they have every incentive to keep him on ice for the entire season.
As to the other four, they have two veterans and two rookie. It’s hard to imagine all four of them being on the Week 1 roster. (Then again . . . .)
So who goes? Kenny Pickett or Joe Flacco could be traded or, worst-case scenario, released. Dillon Gabriel, taken two rounds before Sanders, could be traded. Sanders, in theory, could be traded or released. (Fifth-round picks get cut all the time.)
Barring something extremely unexpected and unlikely, they’ll eventually have no more than three quarterbacks on the roster when it drops from 90 to 53. The most likely outcome (for now) is that they’ll keep one of the two veterans and both rookies.
So if it’s Flacco or Pickett and Gabriel and Shedeur, who starts? In theory, it will be determined based on how the players perform in the offseason program, training camp, and the preseason. When rookie third-rounder Russell Wilson supplanted veteran Matt Flynn for the 2012 Seahawks, it happened because Wilson earned it. He was clearly better than Flynn.
In Cleveland, if one of the quarterbacks clearly outshines the others, it becomes just as easy. If it’s close, that’s when it gets interesting.
The Browns love to insist that owner Jimmy Haslam isn’t making football decisions. From the drafting of Johnny Manziel to the stubborn refusal to bench Deshaun Watson, there’s plenty of reason to believe that those who receive paychecks from Haslam are saying what they have to say (and doing what they have to do) to ensure that they’ll continue to receive those paychecks.
Haslam will have an opinion on who should be the Week 1 starter. If it’s close, his opinion will carry tremendous weight.
If he wants Shedeur, he’ll likely get Shedeur. Making him the starter will validate the organization’s decision to prioritize analytics over all other factors in adding to the roster a rookie who will complicate the broader dynamics of the establishment of a 53-man football team for 2025.
It’s possible that the Browns will start the season with one of the veterans, riding it out until the time comes to give the team a boost. Much of that will depend on the schedule, to be released in 11 days. If they get some winnable games early, they might build momentum. If they face a September-October juggernaut, the wheels could fly off quickly. (They face their division rivals twice, the teams of the NFC North and AFC East, and the Raiders, Titans, and 49ers.)
Whether Sanders starts in Week 1 or at any point in 2025 will be largely up to him. Will he win the in-house competition clearly?
Just as importantly, will a close call fall his way?
As the Browns continue to reel from the disaster that was the Watson deal, they badly need a win. Especially at the quarterback position.
Think of how San Francisco’s discovery of Brock Purdy with the last pick in the 2022 draft obscured the horrible decision they made a year earlier to trade up for Trey Lance. If Sanders pans out, the Browns will have a significant counterbalance to the Watson fiasco.
That’s the biggest consideration looming over all of this. The same team (owner) that stubbornly refused to admit failure as to the Watson trade (but finally has) could be desperate to fashion success from the drafting of Shedeur Sanders. And that could result in Sanders making it onto the field far sooner than later.
If he does enough to be objectively ready to go. And if the competition is close enough to not spark a potential mutiny in the locker room.
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