Heading into a new season, the Cleveland Browns continue to keep us on edge as to who their QB1 will be in Week 1. However, one thing is certain: they are not planning to part with any of their four candidates.
According to the latest reports, the team would keep all four of its quarterbacks on its 53-man roster: veterans Joe Flacco and Kenny Pickett , and newcomers Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders.
The decision to keep all of their QBs is, to say the least, unusual as teams are accustomed to keeping at most three of them. Despite this, for the team it doesn’t represent a blow on the financial side as they only have $7.6 million committed to their four quarterbacks and that’s not even a fifth of starting QB Deshaun Watson’s pay.
So why did they make this decision? It could all be due to Sanders, who has been a talking point since his arrival with the team. The former Colorado Buffaloes quarterback was a fifth-round pick with the 144th selection by the Browns, despite his projection pointing much higher. However, his name has stolen the attention of thousands of fans and NFL legends, and his performance, even more so. Or so NFL veteran James Jones believes.
James Jones’ view
Speaking to The Facility, the former wide receiver believes that “It’s crazy” that everything that has been said about Sanders, even “before training camp and before Shedeur even got an opportunity to play a game. That means he has checked every box that he needs to check.”
The truth is that last season alone backs up Sanders’ play, as he threw for 4,134 yards with 37 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. Now, his performance in minicamp and OTAs has impressed his teammates and coaching staff.
The battle for the starting job is tough and numerous, but it is precisely this, for Jones, that has turned it into a meritocracy: “Number one, that lets me know it’s a wide-open competition. Number two, we want to keep these veterans out here, let them maybe trot out there first. But we are going to keep these young boys because they showed us they could play,” Jones said.
Despite this, other analysts such as Mike Florio are not keeping their four quarterbacks and are only floating this idea “to have some leverage in the trade”. That is, if the rest of the teams think they will not keep them in camp, “no one will be willing to offer anything for the player who is left out (we still think that, if there is one, it is Pickett),” Florio wrote through NBC Sports.
However, it’s all speculation and whatever the Browns plan is there is one thing to take for granted: Shedeur Sanders is here to change the game.
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