Former Colorado star quarterback Shedeur Sanders is one of four QBs battling for the Cleveland Browns starting job ahead of the 2025 season.<\/p>\n
Sanders, veteran Joe Flacco, former Steelers first-round pick Kenny Pickett<\/a> and fellow rookie Dillon Gabriel are all competing to be the guy at quarterback for the Browns this fall.<\/p>\n So who should actually be the starting quarterback for the Browns? According to former NFL General Manager Mike Tannenbaum, Cleveland should go with Joe Flacco.<\/p>\n Tannenbaum pointed to the fact that Flacco has started 191 career regular season games as the reason why.<\/p>\n \u201cTheir schedule is remarkably [difficult],\u201d he said on Get Up<\/a>. \u201cThey start off with Cincinnati, Baltimore, Green Bay, Detroit and Minnesota. <\/p>\n \u201cLook, Shedeur Sanders or Dillon Gabriel — their two rookie quarterbacks — may be their future. But as the ultimate bridge quarterback with that sort of brutal start, let\u2019s go with Joe Flacco and all those starts.\u201d <\/p>\n Tannenbaum was the GM for the New York Jets from 2006-12 and also worked in the front office for the Miami Dolphins from 2015-18. He is currently an analyst for ESPN.<\/p>\n As Tannenbaum said, he knows that Joe Flacco isn\u2019t the quarterback of the future for the Browns, but he also doesn\u2019t like the idea of throwing Shedeur Sanders or Dillon Gabriel into the fire immediately against one of the toughest schedules in football.<\/p>\n The Browns will open with a Bengals team that just missed out on the playoffs last year and has one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL in Joe Burrow. From there, Cleveland will play five straight games against teams that were in the playoffs in 2024.<\/p>\n While Tannenbaum believes Flacco should start at QB for the Browns, former Pro Bowl receiver T.J. Houshmandzadeh recently shared on the Nightcap podcast<\/a> what he is hearing about the Browns quarterback competition. Houshmandzadeh says that it is currently a two-player race and that Shedeur Sanders<\/a> and Joe Flacco are not in the running.<\/p>\n \u201cI was told from somebody that\u2019s in the building, that ain\u2019t a player, it\u2019s really coming down to Kenny Pickett or Dillon Gabriel,\u201d T.J. Houshmandzadeh said. \u201cThat\u2019s what I was told. But now, when you get the reports that Shedeur is completing 7 out of 9 passes, like is it against the starters, or is it against the 3s and 4s \u2013 the guys that are going to get released?<\/p>\n \u201cSo it seems impressive when you see the graphic, but is it really impressive if it\u2019s not against the starters or guys that are going to be on the team. You don\u2019t know how they\u2019re dividing up the reps, and it\u2019s virtually impossible with the amount of snaps.\u201d<\/p>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Colorado star quarterback Shedeur Sanders is one of four QBs battling for the Cleveland Browns starting job…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2054],"tags":[86,85,54,29284,2337,7,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-182601","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-browns","8":"tag-browns","9":"tag-cleveland","10":"tag-cleveland-browns","11":"tag-cleveland-browns-veterans-minicamp-2025","12":"tag-clevelandbrowns","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114798888585180845","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}