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Colorado Buffaloes football legend Shedeur Sanders and Dillon Gabriel are competing for the Cleveland Browns’ starting quarterback position with a former Super Bowl champion and a recent first-round pick.
Normally, starting rookies under center is a bad idea. For the Browns, though, ESPN analyst and former NFL QB Dan Orlovsky believes figuring out the future of the position is more important than making a half-hearted attempt to win with Joe Flacco or Kenny Pickett.
"I would do everything I can to start either Shedeur Sanders or Dillon Gabriel this year. I would only start Joe Flacco or Kenny, and probably Joe, if, ‘Oh my gosh, this is a disaster.’ And if you're Kevin Stefanski and Andrew Berry, their head coach and general manager, you go, ‘Hey, if one of these two kids starts, we're going to get fired,’ if it's that bad throughout the preseason,” Orlovsky said on the Pat McAfee Show Monday.
“There's not a ton of benefit, for me, starting Joe Flacco, because it doesn't answer anything with the potential of next year's class and them figuring out long term at least what's the situation. So, I would start one of those two rookies.”
Sanders has reportedly outperformed Gabriel thus far in Browns rookie minicamp, per Zac Jackson of the Athletic.
“In just throwing the ball, it's not close. Shedeur Sanders. It's not close,” Jackson said on the Ultimate Cleveland Sports Show. “It's no question.
"I'm impressed with the way Shedeur threw the ball, like it jumps off his hands and spins it. This is what an NFL quarterback is supposed to look like. In the realm of it, it's Day 1, it's step one.”
Sanders beating Gabriel doesn’t mean he’s the starter. But from the sounds of it, beating Gabriel and convincing Cleveland head coach Kevin Stefanski to roll the dice instead of going with safe and a low ceiling is on the table.
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