With a quarterback room consisting of Shedeur Sanders, Deshaun Watson, and Dillon Gabriel, the Cleveland Browns have a lot of questions about who will be the starter for the 2026 season.
Despite the uncertainty, former Browns quarterback Robert Griffin III believes that the offense belongs to Sanders, and the team backs him.
Robert Griffin III Backs Up Shedeur Sanders’ Case for Starting
From the outside looking in, the quarterback room for the Browns is a mess. However, Griffin believes that Sanders currently has the starting job locked up.
During “The Ken Carman Show with Anthony Lima”, a soundbite was played from Griffin in which he said the following:
“If I was in the decision-maker chair of who should be my starter when we start in OTAs and we go to our first mandatory mini camp, I’m starting Shedeur Sanders,” Griffin said. “And the reason is a lot of people talk about stats, and he threw more interceptions than touchdowns… Well, what they did with him at quarterback was they won games. That to me is one of the most important things for the quarterback position.”
“When you step into the huddle, when you step onto the field, do you believe that you have a chance to win with the guy who is in the huddle with you at quarterback? The Cleveland Browns locker room believes they can win with Shedeur Sanders,” Griffin added. “That they don’t believe they can win with Deshaun Watson. They don’t believe that they can win with Dillon Gabriel. And that to me says this [Shedeur] should be the guy, and it’s his job to lose at that point.”
Sure, the Browns won games with Sanders, but it isn’t as much as you think.
In 2025, the Browns were 3-4 when Sanders started, compared to Watson’s 9-10 record (2022-2024) and Gabriel’s 1-5 record. Although the Browns are winning some games with the Colorado product, they don’t have a winning record with him.
If anything, it would be fairer to attribute those wins to the Browns’ defense than the offense. In PFSN’s NFL Defensive Impact Metric, the Browns’ defense ranked sixth in the league with an impact score of 85.0 for a letter grade of B. Comparatively, the offense ranked dead last in the league with an impact score of 52.0 and a letter grade of F in PFSN’s NFL Offensive Impact Metric.
In PFSN’s NFL Quarterback Impact Metric (QBi), Sanders (46th) and Gabriel (47th) ranked as two of the three worst-qualified quarterbacks. Sanders finished the season with an impact score of 56.9 for a grade of F, whereas Gabriel finished with an impact score of 51.0 for a grade of F as well.
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Since 2022, Watson has played enough to qualify for PFSN’s QBi only in the 2024 season. That season, he ranked 39th in the league with an impact score of 51.1 and a letter grade of F.
The Browns won games with Sanders as the starter last season, but that was mainly because of the strength of their defense rather than their offense.
