The Cleveland Browns had the league’s most confusing four-man quarterback competition this offseason, but when the dust finally settled, they unsurprisingly named veteran Joe Flacco the starter, while opting to trade Kenny Pickett and going with rookies Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders as the second and third QBs on the depth chart.
There is a lot of excitement about the rookies, even though they won’t see the field right away, and one analyst recently predicted when Gabriel’s time to play could reasonably be expected.
During a recent episode of The Ken Carman Show with Anthony Lima, team analyst Nathan Zegura called in to note that Gabriel may only see the field in the event of an injury as long as Flacco is playing well.
“Priority 1 is winning now… As long as we’re in the mix and Flacco is playing well, there’s no reason he won’t start 17 games. Dillon Gabriel’s opportunity may only come in event of an injury,” Zegura said.
📞"Priority 1 is winning now… As long as we're in the mix and Flacco is playing well, there's no reason he won't start 17 games. Dillon Gabriel's opportunity may only come in event of an injury."@NathanZegura on when we might see Dillon Gabriel step into the starting role🏈⬇️ pic.twitter.com/YHeyDTvrVR
— 92.3 The Fan (@923TheFan) August 29, 2025
Of course, if Flacco is playing well and the team is winning, he’ll start all 17 games, but is that realistic?
The team that started four quarterbacks last year and five in 2023 is going to suddenly get 17 games out of Joe Flacco?
Flacco is 40 years old and hasn’t started more than nine games in a season since 2017, so to expect him to go all 17 in 2025 behind an offensive line that gave up 66 sacks last season would be asking a lot.
The winning part might not be too realistic either, as it’s tough to envision a path where this team does much of that.
Cleveland’s first six games are against teams that made the playoffs last year, aside from the Cincinnati Bengals in Week 1, who only missed the playoffs because they had a historically bad defense.
After that, the Miami Dolphins and New England Patriots are up next before the bye week, so if the Browns are even at .500 heading into the bye, it would be stunning.
Cleveland needs to figure out if it needs to draft a quarterback in the first round in 2026, and the only way to do that is to find out if Gabriel or Sanders can be a franchise guy.
The Browns can’t do that if Flacco plays 17 games, which won’t likely happen.
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