The Cleveland Browns were easily the most interesting team to follow in the 2025 NFL Draft. GM Andrew Berry turned more than a few heads along the way, trading Travis Hunter to the Jacksonville Jaguars, selecting Dillon Gabriel out of nowhere in the third round, and then circling back to add another quarterback in the fifth round.
That second QB was, of course, Shedeur Sanders, the Colorado gunslinger whose precipitous fall became the defining story of the 2025 draft cycle. Once viewed as a potential No. 1 pick, Sanders fell all the way to Cleveland with the 144th pick. Now, he's not even ahead of Gabriel on the depth chart — and the Browns are planting the seeds for Sanders' burial in the media.
Cleveland straight-up views Gabriel as the better quarterback, per Cleveland.com's Mary Kay Cabot. Sanders "brought the best version of himself to the table" in pre-draft meetings, but his limited schematic vocabulary and propensity for negative plays kept him lower on the Browns board.
Gabriel, meanwhile, cycled through three different programs at UCF, Oklahoma and Oregon. He picked up entirely new playbooks on the fly, established quick chemistry with new teammates, and processed the game at an extremely high level. He's undersized at 5-foot-11, but Gabriel's leadership, football IQ and arm talent were apparently big selling points, with Cabot citing comparisons to Brock Purdy.
This is not great news for Sanders as he embarks on his NFL journey.
Shedeur Sanders is already falling behind in Browns wide-open QB battle
This feels like the beginning of the end for Sanders in Cleveland, and he hasn't even really begun. He will get a chance to prove his mettle in training camp, but it's difficult to envision the path to starting football games right now.
Joe Flacco and Kenny Pickett will presumably duke it out for Week 1 honors. Deshaun Watson still looms over the QB room looking ahead to 2026. As for the next in line, well, it's Gabriel. The Browns plainly love him and view him as a potential hidden gem. He's a year older than Sanders at 24, but if Gabriel is propped up as the de facto successor to Cleveland's hodgepodge of misaligned vets, then Sanders is basically a long-term backup.
That isn't a bad outcome for a fifth-round pick, but it's probably not what Sanders — and most NFL or college football fans — envisioned for the all-time FBS leader in completion percentage. Sanders did take a lot of sacks at Colorado, and the interceptions were a problem. He was also playing behind a makeshift O-line with zero run game and a single viable receiver, though. That he is still the literal all-time leader in completion percentage under those circumstances is one heck of an accomplishment.
Sanders has more size, arm strength and touch than Gabriel, although he probably has a longer way to go when it comes to picking up NFL terminology and making NFL reads. He did linger too long in the pocket at times with Colorado, a trait that got him sacked 94 times across two seasons in Boulder. If Cleveland is worried enough about Sanders to leak those concerns to the media — and to put him firmly behind Gabriel on the depth chart — is an ill omen for his future with the organization.
The Browns got home run value with Sanders in the fifth round, but it's unclear if he will ever get the chance to deliver on that value in a Browns uniform. There's a good chance he ends up as trade bait, rather than a long-term staple of Cleveland's QB room.