The Cleveland Browns will soon enter training camp with a very good problem: several open starting jobs and roster spots, with a host of young players vying to win their way onto the 53-man roster and carve out significant roles.
The Browns’ worst problem, though, is their looming competition at quarterback, a group left largely unchanged from the one that struggled mightily through the 2025 season.
With Deshaun Watson back healthy and tethered to the roster due to his immovable contract, GM Andrew Berry and team leadership are essentially allowing the current situation to play itself out. The Browns are set to enter training camp with Watson, who hasn’t played a real NFL snap since midway through the 2024 season, and Shedeur Sanders, a fifth-round draft pick with seven career starts under his belt, battling it out to be named the Week 1 starter. Behind them, the Browns still have Dillon Gabriel, the QB they spent a third-round pick on in 2025, and Taylen Green, a sixth-round selection this year.
It’s been well documented that the Browns can't feasibly cut or trade Watson this offseason due to the dead money in his fully-guaranteed contract. The Browns have long appeared to be preparing for a March 2027 separation, with Watson being designated as a post-June 1 release, and it’s hard to see even the most optimistic scenario playing out this year to alter that plan.
ESPN data analyst Seth Walder questioned why the Browns didn’t take a “sunk cost” approach with Watson this year. In other words, swallow the draft capital, precommitted salary, and roster spot that cannot be recovered, and don’t let Watson’s situation dictate personnel decisions or planning for 2026 and beyond:
“One area Cleveland where did not add much at was quarterback. Though the Browns drafted Taylen Green, an intriguing long-shot prospect, they are entering training camp seemingly set for a competition between Deshaun Watson and Shedeur Sanders,” Walder wrote. “A better path would have been to treat Watson as a sunk cost and perhaps acquire another long-shot quarterback — Spencer Rattler? Tanner McKee? Tyson Bagent? — to compete with Sanders. The Browns need as many chances as they can get to find their next long-term quarterback, and Watson is almost certainly not going to be it.”
The Cleveland Browns shouldn't let Deshaun Watson's contract dictate their QB room
What Walder didn’t mention in his commentary, though, is that there is still time for the Browns to take this exact path. Rattler, McKee, and Bagent all remain with their current teams, and trade winds tend to swirl the heaviest during training camp, especially close to cutdown day.
Head coach Todd Monken has talked up both Watson and Sanders at various points of the spring offseason program. It will be interesting to see if that tone changes when the pads start coming on this summer, and the quarterbacks are asked to execute Cleveland’s new system against what should be one of the best defenses in football (even minus Myles Garrett).
If the quarterbacks struggle throughout the summer, which is a very real possibility, what’s stopping the Browns from shaking things up with a trade?
There was rampant speculation around the Browns and former Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby over the past month for a reason. It’s next to impossible to draw any conclusions, positive or negative, on a competing group of quarterbacks with no pads or pass rush in the spring. The real competition starts on July 28, when Browns veterans report for training camp.
Why Tanner McKee makes the most sense if Cleveland makes a move
Of the potential targets Walder mentioned, McKee feels most logical. Berry and the Browns have tight connections to the Philadelphia Eagles front office and hold 11 total picks in the 2027 draft. Philly also curiously traded for Andy Dalton this offseason, pushing McKee to third on the depth chart.
The 26-year-old McKee is entering the final year of his rookie contract, but his elite NFL size at 6-foot-6 and solid production when called up over the past three seasons makes him an intriguing option. If anything, the Browns could get the leg-up on extending McKee as low-cost insurance for Watson and Gabriel, who also doesn’t appear to be in the team’s plans for 2027.
The reality here is that whether Watson starts, sits, or ends up back on injured reserve, his contract is already a sunk cost. The decision not to add real external competition to the group this offseason continues to be a major second guess, but the Browns don’t deserve to be skewered for it until the initial 53-man roster is officially announced at the end of August.
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