CLEVELAND, Ohio — When Cleveland Browns beat writer Mary Kay Cabot published her recent breakdown of how the team’s quarterback competition might unfold, she was “flabbergasted” by the reaction. Browns fans were stunned to see Kenny Pickett and Dillon Gabriel positioned ahead of Super Bowl champion Joe Flacco and rookie Shedeur Sanders.
But should they have been?
“I was flabbergasted,” Cabot said on the Orange and Brown Talk podcast. “But it illustrated for me the notion that a lot of people aren’t necessarily reading every little word that we’re writing these days, and a lot of people are aggregating things that we write and people are picking things up along the way, but not necessarily reading the story.”
For those following the team closely, the order makes perfect sense based on how the Browns acquired each quarterback this offseason.
“I feel this way because this is the commitment that they showed to them when they acquired them,” Cabot explained. “Shedeur and Joe were pretty much afterthoughts for the most part. They did not clamor to get them and they would have been perfectly fine... if both of those guys had landed with another football team.”
The Browns’ first quarterback move was trading for Pickett, surrendering a fifth-round pick and Dorian Thompson-Robinson. They followed by using a third-round selection on Gabriel, a pick that could have addressed other team needs. Flacco wasn’t signed until April for $4 million, while Sanders was a later draft addition when the value was too good to pass up.
As Browns reporter Ashley Bastock noted, “It’s all about what you gave up in order to acquire these players.”
This initial pecking order doesn’t mean the depth chart is set in stone. Cabot emphasized that “just because I have them ordered like that right now doesn’t mean it’s going to end up like that. Doesn’t even mean it’s going to be like that by the time we get to mandatory minicamp.”
The competition will remain fluid throughout OTAs and training camp. As Dan Labbe pointed out, “I think we’re going to see a lot of experimentation, and we only get to watch (five practices).”
What’s important to remember is that when insiders discuss the likely quarterback order, they’re not making personal judgments about talent or potential.
“When we say Kenny Pickett’s gonna go first, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m sitting here pounding the table, that I think Kenny Pickett should be the starter for this football team and is the franchise quarterback,” Labbe clarified. “It’s just we’re looking at what we’ve seen with the Browns.”
For a franchise that has been through dozens of quarterbacks since 1999, this methodical approach makes sense. The Browns need to identify their best options quickly, with Cabot noting: “I think by the time they get to training camp, they better have a pretty darn good idea of who they think their number one and number two quarterbacks are.”
With two AFC North matchups to open the season and four early road games, there’s little time for uncertainty. The Browns’ investment strategy has already revealed their initial preferences — now it’s up to the quarterbacks to either confirm or challenge those expectations on the practice field.
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Note: Artificial intelligence was used to help generate this story from the Cleveland Orange and Brown Talk Podcast by cleveland.com. Visitors to cleveland.com have asked for more text stories based on website podcast discussions.