Dawgs By Nature
Signing Joe Flacco, trading for Kenny Pickett and drafting Dillon Gabriel, Shedeur Sanders, the Browns have options
At the end of the 2024 NFL season, really much earlier in the year, Cleveland Browns fans were ready for the next phase of the franchise. The Browns moved on from Baker Mayfield with the hopes of the upside of Deshaun Watson to take them to the next step.
The “swing and miss” decision drove the franchise off the cliff, with the 2025 offseason seemingly about resetting the team. While Watson returning this year got some attention, he won’t join the four quarterbacks competing to start for the team:
Trading for Pickett, signing Flacco and drafting both Gabriel and Sanders answered Cleveland fans’ desire for “anyone but Watson,” but, as Bill Barnwell of ESPN notes, ended up with more of an “everyone but Watson” result that lacks continuity of play styles:
Flacco thrived two years ago as an under-center, play-action threat in coach Kevin Stefanski’s offense, providing it with a high-risk, high-reward downfield passer. Pickett has worked out of shotgun and has won games by mostly avoiding big mistakes. Gabriel worked out of a spread offense at Oregon and was more of a distributor who threw accurate underneath passes without scaring teams as a downfield thrower. Sanders was in an RPO-heavy offense and played hero ball far too often when asked to drop back behind a dismal offensive line.
While HC Kevin Stefanski notes that they are trying different things throughout the offseason with the quarterbacks, including the order in which they are taking snaps, the differing styles could make it more difficult. Does Stefanski run one base offense with variations that suit each quarterback’s skills better to get a true idea of who will be best for the team? Do the Browns just run the same plays, despite potentially giving an advantage to one quarterback over the others? Least likely but, are there four different offenses?
Barnwell described Cleveland’s offseason plan as “Most likely to pepper the wall and hope something sticks,” but even that may be selling low the difficulty of the process for the coaching staff.
Do you think the Browns quarterbacks are as different as described by Barnwell? No matter that answer, what do you think is the best way for Stefanski to mold his offense during OTAs and training camp?
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