Browns have precedent for trading a QB away during the preseason — Cleveland has done it before

The Cleveland Browns have a lot of quarterbacks. Everyone knows that at this point.

Not only do they have Joe Flacco, Kenny Pickett, Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders (not to mention the injured Deshaun Watson). They also signed Tyler Huntley this week as injuries hit the QB room.

Something's gotta give, right?

The Browns have suggested they wouldn't mind carrying four quarterbacks into the regular season, but the speculation among rumor-makers is that a trade is still the most likely outcome here.

Bleacher Report's Kristopher Knox, for example, wrote Thursday morning that the Browns should be looking to trade away Kenny Pickett.

Knox writes that Pickett "probably isn't the Browns' future." Given that Cleveland has two rookies now, and two first-round picks in the 2026 draft, that's almost certainly true.

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But the most intriguing part of Knox's suggestion is his reminder that the Browns have done this before, 2023.

That year, Josh Dobbs spent almost the entire preseason with Cleveland.

But on Aug. 27, 2023, the Browns traded Dobbs to the Arizona Cardinals with a seventh-round pick to get a fifth-round pick in return.

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That fifth-round selection was subsequently used on Jamari Thrash, who is battling for the WR3 job in Cleveland this year.

There's a precedent for such a late-camp move by the Browns. Don't be surprised if GM Andrew Berry pulls off something like that again. And while there will be plenty of suggestions of a Sanders trade as the month goes on, Cleveland likely wouldn't have drafted him if they intended to trade him before September. Pickett is a strong candidate to be the odd man out.

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