Dawgs By Nature
The 2025 season is quickly approaching, and I’m ready to erase memories of the team’s dismal 3-14 season. One of the talking points when the regular season rolls around will be how veteran QB Joe Flacco — assuming he is named the starter — can rekindle some of that magic Cleveland had the last time they were good, which was the 2023 season.
But Flacco won’t play in the first preseason game against the Carolina Panthers. Neither will QB Kenny Pickett or QB Dillon Gabriel. Instead, it’ll be the team’s fourth — and perhaps most talked about — quarterback in rookie Shedeur Sanders. That leads us into the first of our 10 things I’m looking for in the first preseason game.
1. How Up to Speed is Shedeur Sanders? This is a bit of a crazy moment, given how Sanders has basically not had any first-team reps during the first ten days of training camp. And yet, the most-hyped quarterback on the roster (at least outside of Cleveland) is being thrust into the starting role for the team’s first preseason game.
While I feel that Flacco has a leg up to be the team’s starting quarterback in Week 1, the backup and No. 3 quarterback jobs seem wide open to me. I feel like there is going to be a mix of Cleveland wanting someone to establish themselves as the backup, but also wanting someone to impress enough to where they’d have some trade value. If Sanders does well against the Panthers, great! But does that move him up the depth chart, or does it give Andrew Berry leverage to try to flip the fifth-round pick into a third-round pick, for example? I think there are multiple scenarios at play here, but either way, we want Sanders to perform well. I’m not sure how realistic that outcome will be since he’s scheduled to go up against the Panthers’ first-team defense for a series or two.
2. Field Goal Confidence: One of the Browns’ big downfalls last year was the play of K Dustin Hopkins. After ten days of training camp, we’ve oddly seen very little from the kickers in terms of drills. If the Browns get a few field goal situations set up, we need to see Hopkins put them through the uprights — any NFL team can’t afford a second season of their kicker being in his own head.
3. Return Units: We have heard about some of the kick/punt return reps in camp, but it’ll also be telling who is first up for those roles this week. We should see DeAndre Carter, but maybe one of the younger guys on the back end of the depth chart makes a nice play?
4. Young Receivers: The Browns will be without Jerry Jeudy and Cedric Tillman for the game. David Bell is still recovering from last year’s injury, and Michael Woods was waived. That means there is a whole game for receivers like Jamari Thrash, Luke Floriea, Gage Larvadain, and...
