The 41st starting quarterback in the Cleveland Browns’ post-1999 era is the first Hawaiian to hold the job, the first left-hander of the bunch, the first to officially get the starting assignment just hours before an intercontinental flight and the first with a minivan endorsement deal.
While we didn’t actually scour the internet or local TV commercial archives and prove that no other Cleveland starting quarterback has had an endorsement deal for minivans, Gabriel does drive a van to and from the team facility. He arrives early, stays late, crams the playbook, serves as his own harshest critic and keeps notes and play calls on flash cards, even after he’s memorized them.
Three starts and two months into his NFL career, Gabriel is not yet a star or an established answer for the Browns. He is, however, as fully committed as the folks who drafted him in the third round thought he’d be.
The Browns saw a player capable of mastering an offense, attacking holes in a defense and accurately delivering passes while fully throwing himself into his job. After 63 starts over six college seasons at three different programs, Gabriel arrived in Cleveland ready to prove himself at the game’s highest level.
The 24-year-old became the starter just over a month into his rookie season. And, like the 40 Browns starting quarterbacks before him, Gabriel is noticing that this trip includes unforeseen twists, turns and even the occasional pothole.
He seems at peace with that. He’s in the win column, too, after the defense and run game keyed a 31-6 rout of the Miami Dolphins on Sunday in Gabriel’s first home start.
A native of Mililani, Hawaii, Gabriel took the field in Cleveland at Huntington Bank Field and was greeted by sideways rain and wind gusts reaching nearly 50 mph. He only threw 18 passes but completed 13 of them, and the Browns rolled to victory. He joked after the game that he “didn’t even notice the weather” because he was so focused on commanding the huddle and the offense.
“I’ve got a job to do and I want to do it at a high level,” Gabriel said. “And winning is fun, like I said before, but the sun comes up the next day, and we’ve got a new week. So every story lasts about two days and then you’re rolling (to the next one).”
It has been a journey: long nights, long flights, multiple transfers and a four-man quarterback competition to begin his professional career that led to him serving four games as Cleveland’s backup before he got the starting nod.
Though the franchise’s history and uncertainty on many fronts offer nothing close to a guarantee about what the future holds for Gabriel, the Browns see a player who didn’t blink after being sacked six times in Pittsburgh on Oct. 12, and who continues to try to master little details for an offense that began the season with 18-year veteran Joe Flacco as the starter.
Browns coach Kevin Stefanski made the switch to Gabriel in Week 5, and Flacco was traded soon after to the Cincinnati Bengals.
“Dillon just is himself,” Browns offensive coordinator Tommy Rees said. “I think he’s got a calmness to him, a real true confidence to his personality and his ability that I think guys have fed off of since he’s been here. It doesn’t look like he needs to step far outside of who he is to do that for our guys.”
Jeff Lebby, the head coach at Mississippi State and Gabriel’s college offensive coordinator at two different programs, frames it similarly.
“Dillon’s got a really high give-a-s— level,” Lebby said. “He loves football, he loves competing and he’s always gonna fight for his guys and his team. That’s a good place to start, and it’s authentic.
“Intangibly, he’s as good as I’ve ever been around. He’s got great anticipation and great accuracy as a thrower, and that translates at all levels, but it’s the consistency of the person that gets guys to follow him. And when your leaders are that tough and that competitive, guys generally do follow.”
Dillon Gabriel earned his first career victory as an NFL starter in the Browns’ Week 7 win over the Dolphins. (Jason Miller / Getty Images)
McKenzie Milton, now the quarterbacks coach at the University of Central Florida, was a record-setting QB at UCF before a gruesome leg injury derailed his career and indirectly launched Gabriel’s. But before either of them ever visited the state of Florida, Milton and Gabriel were teammates at Mililani High School in Hawaii, where Milton was a senior starter and Gabriel was his freshman understudy.
“Now that I’m in coaching, I guess I can call Dillon my first evaluation,” Milton said. “But truthfully, I had heard about him before I ever met him. He was going to a private school (Punahou). I guess he probably was only 14 years old, but he could spin it. He transferred over to Mililani, and just the way he worked, the way he was so serious about the game at such a young age, I knew he was special.”
Milton went to UCF and started immediately. Gabriel took over at Mililani High as a sophomore and helped the team win a state title.
As a high school senior, Gabriel committed to Army. He didn’t really aspire to run an option-based offense, but Army was the only school to offer Gabriel before his senior season. Army’s head coach, Jeff Monken, coached Gabriel’s father, Garrett, at the University of Hawaii, which meant there were personal ties to potentially ease the transition in going from Hawaii to West Point, N.Y., about 50 miles from New York City.
But the word was out, and recruiting interest picked up as Gabriel shattered Hawaiian high school passing records that previously belonged to Milton and Tua Tagovailoa, the opposing starting quarterback in Gabriel’s first NFL win last week.
Even as Milton got his wish and convinced Lebby and then-UCF head coach Josh Heupel to seriously recruit Gabriel, UCF initially offered Gabriel the opportunity to grayshirt, which meant he would not enroll until the following January.
Things changed after Georgia offered Gabriel. With interest from other name-brand schools growing in the wake of the Bulldogs’ offer, Gabriel took a visit to USC, too, all the while hoping things would work out with UCF. Then Milton suffered the leg injury late in the 2018 season, forcing UCF to reassess its quarterback plans for both the immediate and long-term future.
“I absolutely remember (Milton) constantly talking about this quarterback from Mililani that he said was going to be better than he was, and this was at a time where (Milton) was playing as well as anybody in all of college football,” Lebby said. “McKenzie knew who Dillon was, knew the family, and he begged us to get to know them all.
“It was McKenzie’s belief that started the whole thing, and it worked out for Dillon and for UCF.”
Milton spent two more years at UCF, but he did not play while rehabbing the injury. Gabriel took online classes to be eligible for early high school graduation and enrollment at UCF, and he became a true freshman starter in 2019, just seven months after arriving.
“It is easy to say now, but choosing UCF and moving across the country at just barely 19 years old did change my life in the sense of, like, life on the island is simple,” Gabriel said. “It’s what I knew, obviously, and simple made me happy, too. But for a long time, I was driven by these (football goals) and my love for this game, and I always knew I had to leave Hawaii eventually to play at the highest level.”
Gabriel was an immediate starter as a true freshman at UCF and threw 61 TD passes over his first two college seasons. (Joe Robbins / Getty Images)
When Gabriel was homesick, he’d crash at Milton’s apartment. When Gabriel threw 61 touchdown passes over his first two college seasons, Milton was often the first to greet him on the sideline.
Gabriel played in three games for UCF in 2021 before suffering a season-ending clavicle injury. He then transferred to Oklahoma, where he was a two-year starter and the Big 12 Offensive Newcomer of the Year in 2022. After contemplating a jump to the NFL ahead of the 2024 season, Gabriel instead went back to the transfer portal and landed at Oregon, where he wore No. 8 in honor of another Hawaiian quarterback and former Oregon star, Marcus Mariota.
Last fall, Gabriel led the Ducks to an unbeaten regular season, was the Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year and finished third in Heisman Trophy voting. He finished his college career tying Case Keenum as the all-time leader in FBS touchdown passes with 155.
In April, just before the NFL Draft, Mililani announced the establishment of the Gabriel Family Training Room, a project that includes a new workout facility and two recovery rooms paid for by Gabriel and his various sponsorships and endorsement deals.
That, Gabriel said, “is something I’m really proud of because of all the people who helped me and all the kids it can benefit.” And then he said something else: He’s already working on bringing another weight room to Mililani.
“Of course I’m (biased) because I love the kid. I love him more now that he’s not a kid and we’ve grown so close,” Milton said. “But I can tell you that knowing him like I did, from him being a ninth grader to watching him grow up and play quarterback, I wasn’t just saying or hoping he could play. I was watching a kid who had a real shot to get to college and play early, and that’s what I was telling Lebby what seemed like every day.
“He broke all of my records, he broke all of Tua’s records in Hawaii. He went to college and performed right away. He became a third-round NFL pick, and he’s always done it the same way. I don’t know a lot about Cleveland or the Browns, but I think people there are going to love him because he’s going to fight for that team and that city every single day.”
Gabriel led the Ducks to an undefeated regular season and the Big Ten championship in his one year at Oregon, while finishing third in Heisman Trophy voting. (Justin Casterline / Getty Images)
Knowing that he was making “a lot of NIL money” and that the numbers were at least semi-public when he arrived at Oregon in early 2024, Gabriel told the folks handling his business affairs that he didn’t want a flashy vehicle. In fact, he wanted something that could fit as many teammates as possible because he wanted to be the driver when someone needed a ride to the airport before a long weekend, or if the players wanted to temporarily escape campus life.
Across the landscape of college football’s top programs, NIL deals have resulted in lots of sports cars and souped-up SUVs being parked in football facility lots. Gabriel chose a minivan.
“Just trying to build relationships and just grow as a good teammate,” Gabriel said. “I didn’t want to put myself out there in that way or show anyone (up). I also love minivans, so it’s just kind of the confidence in who I am and that I’m not giving a rip about what other people might think.
“We had one growing up, so it reminds me of riding with my brothers to games and other places. Also, it’s just kind of nice to know that you can fit all your stuff in one place when you go somewhere.”
A good pitchman is always working. In June, Chrysler Pacifica officially announced Gabriel as a brand ambassador.
“I’ve been in Dillon’s van,” Browns first-round rookie Mason Graham said. “It’s really nice. It’s got leather seats and everything.”
Browns rookie linebacker Carson Schwesinger said his ride with Gabriel over the summer was his first in a teammate’s minivan.
“It gets the job done,” Schwesinger said. “It’s all you need, point A to point B. It looks a lot cooler than you think, too. We went somewhere and I was like, ‘I get it.’”
Gabriel is almost robotic with his standard coachspeak answers during local interview sessions. His ability to absorb and attack the playbook drew the Browns to him — and probably accelerated his ascent to starter. Two days before he became the first rookie quarterback to make his starting debut in an NFL International Series Game, he began listing the coaches from his past who sent him encouraging messages.
Later, showing his sense of humor, he acknowledged that it might be because he’s had so many coaches throughout his six-season college journey.
When asked earlier this month to reflect on leaving Hawaii at such a young age to chase his football dreams in Florida, he said, “The flight to Orlando is long as s—. There’s a lot of time to think about everything.” He said he probably does have a lot of frequent-flier points from his various college stops, but he joked that he’s never been able to stick with the right credit card to maximize those miles.
“Dillon is one of the great people I’ve ever met, and I don’t say that lightly,” Oregon offensive coordinator Will Stein said. “Just a lovable person. Fiery as hell, competitive as hell, but fun to be around and just really natural with leadership and making people feel like they’re important. He’d get after you if he thinks you’re (screwing up), but he also could make the equipment guy feel as important as the president.”
Besides the wins and the big numbers Gabriel put up in his final college season, Stein said he’ll remember “the jokes, the energy, the way he’d make everyone understand what was and wasn’t working” as the Oregon quarterbacks went through schemes and concepts on film or the chalkboard.
When Gabriel returned to campus in the spring for his pro day, he interrupted one of Stein’s meetings by shoving the doors open unannounced and flexing like a professional wrestler.
“I’m 36, and Dillon was in college so long that he’s gotta be almost 35,” Stein said. “So we related on our football work, and we relate out of football, too. We still text every week, and there’s maybe not a lot of football talk going on, but there is trash talk. He’s a competitor in every single thing he does. Just like laughing at your buddies or making dinner plans for the offseason, he wants to be super prepared for that, too.”
Gabriel played well in London in his starting debut and threw two well-placed touchdown passes, but the Browns faltered late and lost to the Minnesota Vikings. Then came the Flacco trade, followed by a difficult trip to Pittsburgh during which Gabriel had 65 dropbacks and 52 official pass attempts while taking a pounding from the Steelers. The run game and defense led the way last week, and now the 2-5 Browns have a chance to play themselves into range in the AFC North this week at 5-2 New England.
With two first-round picks next year, the Browns might be back in the quarterback draft business. Or, if Gabriel can revive a struggling offense and spark a turnaround over the next couple of months, he could entrench himself as the starter going forward.
He spent the spring and summer as the second-most popular rookie quarterback on the roster behind fifth-round pick Shedeur Sanders, but Gabriel has carefully navigated that situation — and stayed clearly ahead of Sanders on the depth chart — by doing what he’s always done: Focusing on the work, the playbook and the little details that helped him go from lightly recruited to decorated producer and pitchman.
“I definitely approach my craft with diligence and respect for my competition,” Gabriel said. “But I love this game. I simplify the complex. I want to win ballgames, and I want to do it with people I enjoy going to work with. I think as you focus on that and focus on the right things, at some point, none of that other stuff even matters.
“This has been my journey. It’s unorthodox. How funny is it that (I made my first start) in London after all (the places I’ve been)? I’ve just played a lot of ball, been around a lot of different people, lot of different situations. Everything for me is never too high, never too low. Nothing surprises me at this point. There’s a job to be done, and I want to do it at the highest level.”