It's been a rough season for the Cleveland Browns through eight games. As the team passes the halfway point of the season, here are five things I want to see from the group over the next two months.
1. Development from a Quarterback
When the Browns switched to Dillon Gabriel from Joe Flacco after four games, the idea wasn't necessarily that Gabriel would provide superior play, but rather that he'd be able to show development over the course of his time as the starter; learning, growing, and showing that he either deserved to factor into the team's starting QB competition for 2026, or that he was capable of being the long-term backup to the eventual franchise passer.
Four games into his tenure, that hasn't exactly happened. Gabriel has made some good throws, but overall his accuracy hasn't been much different than Flacco's. The real problem has been Gabriel's decision-making and processing, or lack thereof. On the season, he's averaging just 6.4 yards average depth of target, which ranks 37th out of 39 eligible quarterbacks, and his 4.9 yards per attempts is dead last, almost a full yard behind the next starter, Carolina's Bryce Young.
Much of this is a result of Gabriel's propensity to dump the ball off to his security blanket, whether it's his tight end or running back. That's better than forcing a pass into coverage or not seeing a dropping defender, but Gabriel is simply not making his way through reads or getting his eyes where he needs to. There are many plays each game that are left on the field, where Gabriel either doesn't understand what the defense is doing pre-snap and doesn't know where his answers are going to be, or simply doesn't process things quickly enough or correctly, never seeing the open man.
There are, of course, instances of him finding his man and missing him, and still others where he takes a deep shot purely for the sake of throwing deep, without caring about the matchup or whether his receiver is open. When last we saw Gabriel on the field, he had made a Dan Orlovsky-level mental lapse, throwing the ball away out of bounds from within the pocket in the end zone on second down, resulting in an intentional grounding penalty and a safety.
Gabriel has the ability to be a fine backup in this league, but the early returns on his play are not encouraging. He needs to start showing progression rather than regression, otherwise he's going to be replaced as the starter by the team's fifth-round pick, Shedeur Sanders.