Shedeur Sanders May Lead Cleveland Browns to an Unusual Scenario originally appeared on Athlon Sports.
Call it the Shedeur Sanders effect: The Cleveland Browns are strongly considering carrying four quarterbacks on their active roster for at least a significant portion of the season, according to Cleveland.com’s Mary Kay Cabot.
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This would be a relatively unusual move. In the modern-day NFL, where teams can bring up players from their practice squads on a whim, even having three active quarterbacks has become passé. Instead, teams prefer to keep a starter and a primary backup on the roster, and have a third signal-caller on the practice squad for emergencies. This situation generally works – it’s seldom that two quarterbacks get hurt in a single game. But as a matter of principle, it’s a stark contrast to the realities of an NFL where the quarterback is the most valuable position, perhaps in all sports today.
Cleveland Browns quarterback Shedeur Sanders (12) watches quarterback Dillon Gabriel (5) during day two of NFL rookie minicamp at the Cleveland Browns training facility.Jeff Lange / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
That lesson is something the Cleveland Browns have learned the hard way, time and again. After deciding to shed former No. 1 overall pick Baker Mayfield, the team traded away three first-round picks and more to bring Deshaun Watson into the fold. Cleveland then signed Watson to the largest guaranteed contract in NFL history, which was nearly a quarter-billion dollars. The Browns brass thought their problems at the position were over.
Indeed, they had only begun.
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Three years on, Watson’s contract has become an albatross, and Watson himself won’t even see the field in his fourth year. When the troubled quarterback sees the field, his play seems to degrade with each passing game. It is unlikely he will ever play for the Browns again.
With little capital to spend, the Cleveland Browns have taken an aggressive, if unusual, stance on the position, opting for a completely open competition among four low-cost options whose total salary commitment will cost the team less than $10 million this season. By contrast, the Atlanta Falcons will pay Kirk Cousins more than four times as much to backup starter Michael Penix (an unkinder version of this is that the Browns will pay Watson nearly that amount as well).
It is specifically that – the cost – that allows the Browns to perhaps keep all four of their quarterbacks. Beyond that is the uncertainty of the team’s offense. After a disastrous 2024 in which the team attempted to convert to an offense based on the principles of the spread, Cleveland is reverting to the fundamentals of a run-first, play-action, deep pass offense favored by head coach Kevin Stefanski this year. The only one of the four quarterbacks on the roster with experience in such an offense is 40-year-old Joe Flacco.
Cleveland Browns quarterback Joe Flacco (15).Troy Taormina-Imagn Images
However, it is the X factor of Shedeur Sanders that is perhaps the most significant ingredient in this potential decision.
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When the Cleveland Browns selected Dillon Gabriel in the third round of the 2025 NFL Draft, it appeared to all observers that the team had its quarterback trio. They had brought back Flacco from his year of exile with the Colts, and given up a fifth-round choice to acquire a reclamation project in Kenny Pickett. It made sense to add a rookie to the mix.
Many thought that rookie would be Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders, son of NFL Hall of Famer Deion Sanders. Many also thought Sanders would be taken with the No. 2 overall selection, held by the Browns. There were some scenarios that showed Sanders sliding into the early stages of the draft’s second round, where Cleveland held the top pick.
What ended up happening was the oddest draft slide in NFL history. Sanders – widely expected to go at least in the Top 10 – was still available in Round 5. Reports vary as to why this happened, though the consensus seems to be that it wasn’t as much Sanders’ talent as how he handled himself in pre-draft workouts and meetings. Though the Browns appeared to be set in their quarterback room, the team’s brass could not pass up an opportunity to select a player with Round 1 talent in the fifth round. Thus, giving birth to the four-headed quarterback competition the team finds itself in today.
The average fifth-round choice quarterback would be a candidate for the practice squad. But unless Sanders looks a special kind of awful in the preseason, it’s unlikely that the team can stash him there, since he would have to clear waivers first. Ditto Dillon Gabriel, in whom the team invested a considerably more valuable choice.
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Oddly, the most viable practice squad candidate is Flacco. Veterans who have a certain tenure in the NFL can be released without being subjected to the waiver process. Cleveland could then call Flacco up to their active roster each week without holding an active roster spot for him. This presumes that Flacco is not the starter, however.
Time will tell how this situation resolves itself. But one thing is clear: The addition of Shedeur Sanders has made this competition a whole lot more interesting to watch.
Related: Deion Sanders ‘happy’ for Shedeur in any NFL situation
This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jun 17, 2025, where it first appeared.