WTF Browns?! Shedeur Sanders' arrival begins another QB circus in Cleveland

For a brief moment in Cleveland, everything made sense. The Browns were ready to move on from their disastrous "swing and miss" with Deshaun Watson. They had rebuilt their quarterback room with a chance for short-term and long-term success. 

They were doing everything right. They were making smart decisions. They were even, apparently, following a plan.

Then they reminded everybody that they’re still the Cleveland Browns.

It’s not that they made a mistake when they stopped the draft freefall of Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders last weekend by selecting him in the fifth round of the 2025 NFL Draft. It’s more that they made a mess. They took a player who might be the highest-profile fifth-round pick in NFL history — and clearly the most famous player in the this year's draft — and selected him 50 picks after they took another quarterback, one whom they seemed to be lining up as their potential Quarterback of the Future.

And it’s not just that Sanders is now peering over the shoulder of 24-year-old fellow rookie Dillon Gabriel, their third-round pick out of Oregon. He’s also behind 26-year-old Kenny Pickett, a former first-rounder who they traded for in March. And 40-year-old Joe Flacco, who signed a one-year deal that could be worth up to $13 million. And while Deshaun Watson probably won’t play this season, thanks to his re-torn Achilles, he still weighs on the franchise like an over-priced anchor, with two years left on his stupid, fully guaranteed, $230 million contract.

It's a big and crowded room, and the biggest spotlight is on the last guy to come in. Sanders is fourth, maybe fifth on the depth chart and almost certain to draw most of the attention from rubber-neckers passing by the crash. When the Browns drafted Gabriel, it seemed like they were finally ready to move on from all the fires they’ve created at quarterback with decades of wrong evaluations, poor instincts and bad decisions. They had short- and long-term plans in action.

Then they decided to light a firecracker and toss it onto their quarterback plans.

"You know, we live by our board," Browns general manager Andrew Berry said after the draft in an attempt to explain that decision. "We felt like (Sanders) was a good, solid prospect at the most important position. We felt like it got to a point where he was probably mispriced relative to the draft."

Live by the board, or die by the board? Actually, the Browns didn’t live by their board as much as they fell into it. They stayed true to their evaluations in the third round, when they surprised many by taking Gabriel instead of Sanders with the 94th overall pick. He was generally rated as a third-day pick, in part because he only stands 5-foot-11. Most seemed to rate him as a future backup, making him an odd Day 2 choice for a team still searching for a future starter.

If they had stopped right there, they could have professed their love for Gabriel, touted his potential, told the NFL why they were all wrong about him — which they started to do. And then they could have let him spend a year quietly carrying a clipboard, far from the spotlight, watching Flacco or Pickett play.

But they couldn’t help themselves one day later when Sanders was still on their board.

"One huge reason why (Sanders) slipped so far in the draft is because there is this giant spotlight on him," said one NFC personnel executive. "Once he got past the teams that needed a franchise quarterback, he fell into the developmental range. But we generally want those guys to sit quietly and learn and support the starter. Just blend into the background.

"Is that even going to be possible with him?"

The answer is an obvious "no" for anyone who watched the Sanders story play out over the three days of the NFL Draft. There was no bigger story and no bigger star. He played into it — with more than a little help from his flashy, Hall of Fame father, Deion Sanders — spending the entire pre-draft process behaving like he was a sure-fire, top-5 pick. He then spent the beginning of his miserable draft weekend experience in a custom-built, made-for-TV room with his personal brand name "Legendary" written all over the walls, mixed in with his name and dollar signs.

Maybe the whole experience will have humbled him. But the Browns can’t turn off the spotlight now. When they hold their rookie camp in Berea, Ohio this weekend, Gabriel will be No. 1 on the depth chart. But the eyes of the NFL world will be on his No. 2.

In other words, they’ve got a quarterback controversy from Day 1.

"It’s all you guys (in the media) ever want to talk about," said another NFL executive. "Nobody obsesses over the competition at safety. Nobody cares about whether a backup on the offensive line should be playing. But backup quarterbacks are lightning rods. And quarterback controversies, even if it’s just a media creation, can absolutely overwhelm a franchise."

But the Browns focused on the value, not the position — and definitely not the consequences. They had Sanders rated as a Day 2 pick, according to a team source, and they were genuinely surprised to see him slip to Day 3. So when he fell into the fifth round, Berry said "it got to a point where it felt like it was at a pretty steep discount." So they traded their last two picks of the draft — a fifth-rounder and a sixth-rounder — to move up 22 spots to get him before he was gone.

If it were anyone else — literally anyone else in the draft — the pick would’ve been considered a worthwhile flier, some serious value late in the draft.

"Now I look at their (quarterback) room and I don’t know what they’re doing," said the NFL executive. "Do they even have a plan? And you know who else is thinking that? Dillon Gabriel. He spent, what, 12 hours as their likely future starter? And then, this."

And what is this? It’s not even clear if the Browns know. Flacco and Pickett are the most likely quarterbacks to actually play in Cleveland this season. But Gabriel vs. Sanders will be the talk of the summer, if not the entire year. Never mind that the Browns can’t possibly find enough snaps in preseason games or even practice to give both of them a real chance to prove their worth as a rookie.

And by the way, if somehow they figure out that they’re right and Sanders is a steal as a fifth-rounder — "a guy that we think can outproduce his draft slot," as Berry said — then he could become their future starter. And if that happens, it means they absolutely wasted their third-round pick on Gabriel. And if Gabriel wins — which is presumably what the Browns expect, since they liked him a lot better when they made their third-round pick — there’ll be a lot of questions about why they bothered with Sanders at all.

Not that the Browns will care if they eventually land on a franchise quarterback. They believe the result matters far more than the process.

But they didn’t have to unnecessarily complicate the process, which is what they’ve done. They’ve focused the NFL world’s attention on them, at a place on their roster where they shouldn’t want it to be.

"We felt like it wasn't necessarily the plan going into the weekend to select two quarterbacks," Berry said. "But as we talk about, we do believe in best player available, we do believe in positional value. Adding (Sanders) to compete with the guys that are already in there, we felt like that was the appropriate thing to do."

No, it’s a self-created mess for a franchise that has mastered the art of creating those since they were reborn in 1999. They had a plan. Maybe it wasn’t a great one — plenty of NFL people think they over-drafted Gabriel — but it was still a plan and it could have gone smoothly. Instead, they changed direction and are now trying to fix one quarterback problem with another.

And in the process, they’ve invited the kind of attention and scrutiny that won’t be easy to live with. They created the kind of instant quarterback controversy that most teams desperately try to avoid.

Ralph Vacchiano is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He spent the previous six years covering the Giants and Jets for SNY TV in New York, and before that, 16 years covering the Giants and the NFL for the New York Daily News. Follow him on Twitter at @RalphVacchiano.