The quarterback situation for the Cleveland Browns has been a complicated puzzle to fix this season. But if you look at their history, it is not a situation that is all too foreign to the franchise.
When Dillon Gabriel took the field in Week 5 as the starting quarterback in his debut, he became the 41st different player to hold that position since 1999. To put it mildly, figuring out the most important position in the sport hasn’t been their forte.
However, the 2025 season offers a wholly unique problem for the team that stretches beyond just the quarterback room. After Deshaun Watson went down with an injury that would keep him out for the year, the Browns had to pivot. Except their pivot went a million different ways with no real answers.
They signed Joe Flacco after letting him walk a year ago, traded for Kenny Pickett, and drafted two rookies. It has left them at a logjam, paying eight different quarterbacks on the roster.
The Cleveland Browns Quarterback Mess
After losing Watson, the Browns tried to keep a ton of options available for them. That meant adding Flacco and Pickett while drafting Gabriel in the third and Shedeur Sanders in the fifth round of the 2025 NFL Draft.
Eventually, they traded Pickett away before the start of the season, leaving them with Flacco and the two rookies. Giving the veteran the starting job, his run was far from inspiring, causing Cleveland to pivot just four weeks into the year.
Right after giving Gabriel the starting job, they traded away Flacco to the Cincinnati Bengals, with Bailey Zappe a potential candidate to be elevated to the active roster from the practice squad.
Their entire situation has brought to light a shocking fact about their current cap structure. The team has $41.688 million tied up in its quarterbacks, with an astounding eight different players getting a slice of the pie.
Typically, a price range upwards of $40 million is reserved for the true cream of the crop athletes. The Browns haven’t gotten anything close to the number from their group, with the eight names as follows:
- Deshaun Watson – $35.9 million
- Jameis Winston – $2.2 million
- Dillon Gabriel – $1.1 million
- Joe Flacco – $999,000
- Shedeur Sanders – $955,000
- Bailey Zappe – $315,000
- Dorian Thompson-Robinson – $171,000
- Kenny Pickett – $8,000
The two names on the list who have gone unmentioned so far are Jameis Winston and Dorian Thompson-Robinson, both of whom were on the roster last season. The former started seven games for them, throwing for 2,121 yards.
However, a 13:12 touchdown-to-interception ratio severely hampered the team, leading to a 2-5 record in his starts, ranking 22nd out of 39 qualified quarterbacks on PFSN’s QB Impact.
DTR, on the other hand, spent the 2023 and 2024 seasons in Cleveland, starting five games in the process. Throwing for just 880 yards and a single touchdown, he was far from a highlight for the team. An astounding 10 interceptions, though, spelled doom for his career, and the former fifth-rounder was traded to the Philadelphia Eagles as part of the trade for Pickett.
Simply put, the problems at the signal-caller spot have been a major cause for concern for the Browns for quite some time now. Unfortunately, the way things are moving, it doesn’t seem like they’ll find their answer until the 2026 NFL Draft, at the very least.