The Cleveland Browns have reached the always-popular evaluation portion of the 2025 regular season.
This is the time of year where, with the playoffs out of reach, players in the final year of their contracts are working to put together as much positive tape as possible to earn their next deal, young players are eager for an opportunity to show they belong on an NFL roster, and the front office starts thinking about free agency and the NFL Draft.
Perhaps no one is under more pressure than rookie quarterbacks Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders, especially with the Browns holding a pair of first-round selections in 2026 and widely expected to take another shot at drafting a quarterback.
Gabriel had his opportunity with six starts from Week 4 through the first half of Week 11. It was not exactly a stellar six weeks of football as the Browns struggled to score points, and the lone win was against the Miami Dolphins.
By the time he was sidelined at halftime of the Week 11 game against the Baltimore Ravens because of a concussion, Gabriel had completed 59.5 percent of his passes for 937 yards, seven touchdowns, two interceptions, and a quarterback rating of 80.8. Serviceable numbers for a rookie, but certainly nothing that says “he’s our guy.”
Cleveland is now entering its third week with Sanders as the starter, and while he brings a different dynamic to the field, the results have not been any better in Sanders’ first two starts.
Going up against two of the league’s weaker defenses, Sanders has completed just 50.8 percent of his passes for 405 yards, two touchdowns, two interceptions, and a quarterback rating of 69.4. The biggest difference is that Sanders has been able to connect on the type of big plays that were missing with Gabriel running the offense.
Sanders will start again this week as the Browns host the Tennessee Titans, who come into the game with one of the league’s worst defenses. After that comes a three-game stretch against the Chicago Bears (No. 1 in takeaways), Buffalo Bills (No. 1 in passing yards allowed), and Pittsburgh Steelers (always a thorn in the side of the Browns), which will represent a step-up in competition.
Unless he is injured, there is no urgency for the Browns to replace Sanders this season, as they should give him the same number of games as Gabriel to help with the evaluation process.
And Sanders still has a lot to prove over the final five games, as ESPN’s Bill Barnwell points out in his latest column on the players with the most to prove the rest of the season:
Is Sanders an NFL-caliber starter? Not so far. The 23-year-old has been below average or worse across the board by just about every measure of quarterback play. We’ve seen some of the bad habits Sanders showed with taking big sacks at Colorado and in the preseason. He isn’t exactly surrounded with great infrastructure in Cleveland, to be fair, but Sanders’ 11.8 Total QBR ranks 31st out of 32 quarterbacks over the past three weeks.
There have been some big plays, though, and while Gabriel was healthy enough to take a snap when Sanders briefly exited the loss to the 49ers last week, the Browns are reportedly going to start Sanders against the Titans this week. If Sanders can play well in a game against one of the league’s worst defenses, it would stake a case for him to start the rest of the way, giving Sanders a meaningful sample of a rookie season to establish himself as an NFL quarterback.
Is Sanders going to do enough with those snaps to convince the Browns that he should be their long-term quarterback? Probably not, given where he was drafted and how he has played so far. Adequately running an NFL offense over the rest of 2025, though, might be the difference between Sanders quickly washing out of the league or getting an extended run as a backup and occasional spot starter.
Not exactly a ringing endorsement of Sanders, but in his defense, it has only been two games as the starter, and he is just in his third week of gaining those precious reps with the first-team offense. More time on task should start to pay off in on-field success.
But right now it seems more likely that Barnwell is right in saying that Sanders, and throw in Gabriel as well, are destined to be backups, whether that is in Cleveland behind the next great hope or somewhere else in the NFL.
What do you think? Can Sanders do enough the rest of the season to disuade the Browns from drafting a quarterback? Let us know in the comments?
