Shedeur Sanders moved closer to starting for the Browns without taking a snap

Well, the good vibes from last weekend's shocking upset of the Green Bay Packers lasted for all of one quarter. In case you had any hope that stirring performance from the Cleveland Browns might be the start of a new era for the franchise, they disabused everybody of that notion almost immediately in a Week 4 matchup against the Detroit Lions, allowing 20 unanswered points en route to a 20-7 halftime deficit.

While the defense certainly bears some of the blame, Joe Flacco sure didn't help matters. The 40-year-old has looked every bit his age on Sunday, tossing two picks while completing around 50 percent of his passes through the first three quarters. The arm talent is still good enough on most days, but the athleticism simply isn't; at this point his career, it's clear that while he's a valuable backup Flacco isn't the sort of quarterback who's going to elevate the players around him.

Which is exactly what the Browns need right now. Cleveland isn't going to compete for a playoff spot this season, much less a Super Bowl — that much was known coming in. Andrew Berry and Kevin Stefanski are just looking for some signs of progress, evidence to point to that they've got this team headed in the right direction. Playing out the string with Flacco in the name of some fleeting sense of respectability isn't doing anything for anyone, and that's why Shedeur Sanders' time could be coming sooner rather than later.

Joe Flacco is going to force the Browns' hand sooner rather than later

Which isn't to say that the team was wrong for not starting Sanders in Week 1, or that Shedeur is guaranteed to hit the ground running in the NFL. For all the furor surrounding his NFL Draft slide, he fell for a reason — and not just because of concerns about his personality or his outsized media presence. He has a way's to go to become an above-average starter in the pros, which we saw in his preseason reps.

But still: What are we doing here, exactly? Even if you want to argue that Sanders shouldn't be thrown to the wolves behind a sketchy offensive line and underwhelming supporting cast, it's hard to imagine Stefanski allowing his job to sit on the line while Flacco goes out and xeroxes the same old aggressively mediocre stat line on a weekly basis. The incentive structure here points only in one direction, and that's making a change and hoping that it buys you some benefit of the doubt for the future.

Of course, Dillon Gabriel is also here, and it's possible that Cleveland will pull that lever instead. But Gabriel is much more of a known quantity at this point, a guy with lackluster physical traits who's going to keep his head above water with anticipation and accuracy. He'll be a point guard, but again, he's hardly going to elevate. Sanders doesn't have a cannon for an arm either, but he can at least make things happen off-script more regularly, and he has more untapped potential for Stefanski and Co. to dream on.

Or hey, maybe this Cleveland brass is willing to go down with the ship in the name of responsible quarterback development. The entire history of the league and human nature would suggest otherwise, though, and all Sanders has to do now is bide his time.