When you have eight quarterbacks counting against your 2025 salary cap — eight — it’s fair to look at your football team with a critical eye.
From Kenny Pickett to Joe Flacco to rookies Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders, general manager Andrew Berry and the Cleveland Browns have been playing musical chairs at the most important position in sports, leaving fans pleading for some semblance of stability.
Maybe we’ll get there someday, but the toothpaste is already out of the tube for 2025. Despite rumors that he was being groomed to start, the Browns traded Pickett to the Raiders in August. That cleared Flacco to enter Week 1 as the starter.
But with the offense stuck at a crawl after the first month of the season, head coach Kevin Stefanski lost patience. An unprepared Gabriel was inserted as the starter in Week 5, Flacco was inexplicably traded to AFC North rival Cincinnati, and Sanders is now getting his turn, poised to start his third consecutive game in Week 14 against the Tennessee Titans.
The carousel approach at quarterback screams of a franchise that has no plan, and fans can at least take solace in this: Sanders definitely feels their pain.
Cleveland Browns rookie Shedeur Sanders continues to lament a lack of time, reps, and trust (and he’s not wrong)
Since taking over as the Browns’ QB1 in Week 12, Sanders has dropped some not-so-subtle breadcrumbs on how he feels about, at one time, being fourth on the team’s depth chart.
He only has so much authority as a fifth-round draft pick, but with Sanders infusing instant energy and life into another spiraling season, Browns fans have been screaming it for weeks: What took so long?
Sanders subtly said the same thing during Wednesday’s session with the local media.
“The hardest thing in this game right now is just having trust. Having trust with everybody, you know? Certain movements, certain ways we make eye contact… it’s so detailed, and that’s how I play very comfortably. So that’s how I get in my comfort zone. That’s how I get in my bag. That’s how I’m able to do that. … It’s a challenge, but I know we’re going to be able to get over the challenge. But it just expedites everything. You just go out there and take risks. It is what it is.”
Go out there and take risks? It is what it is? That doesn’t exactly sound like the tried-and-true Stefanski coaching points Browns fans have come to know and loathe.
That’s more of a Sanders truth bomb than anything. He’s almost certainly being drilled repeatedly on staying in the pocket, going through his progressions, delivering the ball on time, and not drifting backwards in search of that signature big play he made so often at Colorado.
This wouldn’t feel like such an expedited process had the Browns not drafted two quarterbacks outside of the top 90 selections back in April, or had Sanders been developed for a year first behind a respectable veteran, like Flacco. But, again, that toothpaste left the tube a long time ago.
Sanders is right: It is what it is. The Browns are winging it right now, and they’re not doing themselves any favors entering a 2026 offseason that franchise leadership has to get right.