CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Browns‘ 13-6 victory over the Steelers on Sunday ignited a debate on the Orange and Brown Talk podcast: Is winning meaningless late-season games worth sacrificing draft position for a team desperate for a franchise quarterback?

The win, which dropped Cleveland from the third overall pick to sixth in the upcoming draft, created a clear philosophical divide between those who see any victory over Pittsburgh as worthwhile and those concerned about losing a shot at a potential franchise quarterback.

“I do think that it’s important to establish a culture of winning. I think it’s important to win your division games,” Browns beat reporter Mary Kay Cabot acknowledged before immediately pivoting to the potential consequences. “But in this particular case, it all comes down to the quarterback.”

Browns beat reporter Ashley Bastock didn’t want to hear about tanking.

“I’m just anti-tanking in the NFL,” she said. “I don’t particularly think it works. I would argue it didn’t really work here when they tanked via roster construction and went 1-31 and got all these picks,” Bastock argued, pointing to Cleveland’s own failed history with the strategy. “You look at a team like the Pittsburgh Steelers, they have never needed to tank. The Ravens have never needed to tank. We bring this up a lot. I don’t think the sturdy organizations in the NFL tank.”

The discussion revealed a fascinating tension in how different stakeholders view a franchise’s development. The podcast highlighted how veteran players like Joel Bitonio, Myles Garrett, and Shelby Harris — some of whom may have played their last home game in Cleveland — simply cannot approach games with draft position in mind.

This pragmatic view of the locker room’s mentality was punctuated by perhaps the most impassioned response to the tanking question from Lance Reisland, who joined the podcast later: “If you’re thinking about the draft and you’re not thinking about what football is, football is about winning. Football is about winning with the game in front of you. And the Browns did that today, and that’s the most important thing. I don’t care what anybody tells me. If you. If you’re tanking, you will never have a winning culture. Great organizations never tank. They retool.”

The debate isn’t just philosophical — it has immediate practical implications for the Browns. With the win dropping them from third to sixth in the draft order, they may now be out of range for top quarterback prospects without an aggressive trade-up. This reality forces the organization to consider whether Shedeur Sanders’ development over these final games might justify building around him rather than seeking his replacement.

“If they had a Top 3 pick, I think that they would have had to give strong consideration to at least looking at those top quarterbacks and weighing them heavily against Shedeur Sanders,” Cabot noted, highlighting how this single win against Pittsburgh could fundamentally alter the franchise’s trajectory.

The Browns face the Bengals in Week 18, and another win would likely drop them even further in the draft. That game now becomes another referendum on this philosophical divide: Is it better to secure a higher pick or to establish a winning mentality heading into the offseason?

Whether you believe in culture-building or maximizing draft capital, this debate isn’t going away anytime soon. Hear the full, heated discussion by listening to the latest Orange and Brown Talk podcast, where the panel breaks down all the implications of the Browns’ victory over their division rival.

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