CLEVELAND, Ohio — What should we make of the Browns roster when they take the field for OTAs this week?
There are a lot of unknowns, even beyond the quarterback battle. This team is beginning the process of moving into a new era. They have jettisoned some of their expensive veterans, they finally had a real draft weekend with valuable picks and ... oh yeah, the quarterback battle.
Every spring is full of intrigue and, for most teams, there has been little to no adversity. Players are healthy or getting healthy. No one has lost a game. The grind of the season is still months away.
The Browns will hold OTAs this week and next, mandatory minicamp in two weeks and another week of OTAs after that.
We won’t start getting real answers about the roster until training camp, but for now, here are three realities about the Browns roster that might frame how we view the next few weeks.
If you have four quarterbacks …
Cleveland Browns rookie minicamp day 2
The Browns will likely need a firm answer on either Dillon Gabriel or Shedeur Sanders by the end of the season if they're going to go a direction other than quarterback next draft.Joshua Gunter, cleveland.com
Let’s be blunt: the Browns didn’t trade out of the No. 2 overall pick and acquire an extra first-round pick next year because they loved their quarterback options in this class.
They also wouldn’t mind if one of the young quarterbacks on this roster surprised everyone and seized the job so they can use those picks to build the rest of the team. It would certainly accelerate this whole process.
The reality, however, is even if Dillon Gabriel or Shedeur Sanders shows promise in their rookie seasons, it might not be enough for the Browns to pass on the opportunity to address the position long-term in what, for now, appears to be a much stronger class, even if Arch Manning chooses to stay another year at Texas.
It’s not about getting a maybe at the position. They need a resounding “Yes!” if they’re going to ignore it with what could be two very high picks in the 2026 draft.
Shedeur Sanders still strikes me as the most intriguing of the four, but the Browns clearly valued acquiring Kenny Pickett, their first move when the legal tampering period opened, and drafting Gabriel more than adding Sanders or even Joe Flacco, who they signed in mid-April.
They all have obvious flaws, too, and we’ll probably get to see all the good and bad between now and next January.
How much we learn about each between now and real football is hard to say. Pickett has been a preseason all-star before and two training camps and preseasons of Dorian Thompson-Robinson should be enough to remind Browns fans about the fool’s gold those settings contain, but it’s all part of the battle we’re about to watch.
Is it a battle for the future or just 2025? It feels like the latter, but someone is going to get a chance to change the organization’s mind.
There is a heavy burden on young, unproven players
Cleveland Browns vs. Los Angeles Chargers, November 3, 2024
Cedric Tillman should have an opportunity to establish himself as a long-term option at wide receiver this season.Joshua Gunter, cleveland.com
A big part of this season will be about finding out who is part of this team’s long-term future. When they decided to go all-in and make the Deshaun Watson trade, it came at the cost of adding high-end young talent in the draft. They focused on adding veterans in free agency and the trade market and made just one pick in the first two rounds between 2022 and 2024.
They did make a lot of late Day 2 and Day 3 picks, however, and have a stable of young players they need answers on to see if they unearthed any gems.
The two most notable players are a pair of 2023 picks, wide receiver Cedric Tillman and left tackle Dawand Jones.
The runway is clear for both to seize a future here. The Browns didn’t address either position in the draft or in a significant way in free agency. Both players are coming off seasons in which they had opportunities that were cut short by injury.
Will Tillman set himself up to be the answer at WR2? Is Jones the left tackle of the future?
Jones started three games at left tackle before a broken fibula ended his season. He also underwent arthroscopic surgery this offseason to clean up the surgically repaired right knee that ended his rookie year.
Holding up protecting the blindside — for three of the Browns quarterbacks at least — and staying healthy are the two big questions Jones needs to answer this season.
For Tillman, it comes down to how real the three-game stretch in Weeks 7, 8 and 9 was when he caught 21 passes for 255 yards and three touchdowns. When he suffered what turned out to be a season-ending concussion against Pittsburgh in Week 11, he had two catches for 28 yards. He was starting to build something.
Doing it for 17 games is more difficult, but that’s the point this season for a number of young players — prove it. Tillman will get his chance.
There’s an opportunity, too, at edge rusher. The Browns’ biggest draft investments the last two seasons have come on the interior of the defensive line and they chose not to go the route of adding a veteran rental on the other side of Myles Garrett.
Isaiah McGuire, another 2023 pick, is the most interesting. He had two sacks, three tackles for loss and four quarterback hits in the final three games last season and totaled 2.5 sacks, nine quarterback hits and three forced fumbles for the season after starting the year as a healthy scratch in Week 1. Could the Missouri product grab the job?
If not, Alex Wright, a third-rounder in 2022, is back from a season-ending torn triceps. He had five sacks in 2023 before the injury limited him to four games last season. The Browns also signed Joe Tryon-Shoyinka, a former first-round pick by the Bucs in 2021, who will try to live up to his draft pedigree here, and added Julian Okwara, a 2020 third-round pick by Detroit. They also still have Ogbo Okoronkwo, who excelled as their third edge rusher two seasons ago.
All three positions can easily be addressed next offseason if no one emerges as a certainty in the future or only proves to be more of a depth piece than a potential core player.
There’s only so much one offseason can do
Cleveland Browns players prepared for joint practices with the Minnesota Vikings this week at training camp in Berea.
The Browns might not be looking at a quick turnaround this season.Joshua Gunter, cleveland.com
Don’t take this the wrong way: This isn’t the 1-31 Browns.
Maybe those teams were instructive to GM Andrew Berry as he set out to dig the roster out of an all-in era that resulted in one playoff appearance — a Wild Card loss to Houston two years ago. It’s incredibly difficult to rebuild a team from the studs up. When you have talent, it’s worth keeping, even if winning a Super Bowl is outside of your grasp.
But Browns owner Jimmy Haslam said the quiet part out loud for everyone at the NFL Annual Meeting in March, a necessity since it’s hard for a coach or even a GM to say it. They need buy-in from their roster at all times.
“We took a big swing and miss with Deshaun. We thought we had the quarterback, we didn’t and we gave up a lot of draft picks to get him,” Haslam told reporters. “So we’ve got to dig ourselves out of that hole.”
This isn’t a tank job. The Browns did much of the work already by unexpectedly going 3-14 last season. It earned them a high pick they were able to parlay into more draft capital in the future. It wasn’t fun but it saved them a lot of trouble.
Still, expecting to fix everything in one offseason with limited cap resources was unrealistic and getting this roster back to where it can really compete is going to take time. That foundation is going to get laid with this draft and the next plus an increasing ability to be more aggressive in free agency.
This year’s schedule doesn’t help. The Browns play two of the toughest division in the NFL — their own and the NFC North. They lose a home game to go to London and face a challenging opponent who will be adjusted to the circumstances since the Vikings play in Dublin a week prior. They come back from London to play a Steelers team coming off their bye.
The Browns did well in the draft to get back to their Kevin Stefanski roots, adding two talented running backs and a talented tight end. They continued to lean into Jim Schwartz’s strengths by adding a pressure-creating defensive tackle for the second year in a row. They brought back a veteran offensive line, even if this might be the last ride for the group of Joel Bitonio, Ethan Pocic, Wyatt Teller and Jack Conklin. (That’s still very much TBD.)
Competent quarterback play will help stabilize things. If the defense can force turnovers, that would help, too. Maybe the Browns will surprise people and hang out on the “In the hunt” graphics late into the season.
Still, this is a roster in transition. If the Browns can come away feeling good about the bones of it, it will help ease whatever challenges this season presents.
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