The hardest thing for NFL fans to do, especially during the offseason, is to temper their expectations for their favorite team. When it looks to improve as much as the Cleveland Browns may have, it becomes even more difficult.
An encouraging set of minicamps and OTAs has optimism peaking as the Browns head toward training camp in a couple of weeks. With exciting young talent on both sides of the ball, fans may no longer be as patient as necessary as it develops over the course of the campaign.
With that in mind, analyst Garrett Bush is laying out what would make this Browns’ season a win, and that’s to create an even stronger outlook about what the future may hold.
“When you talk about the expectations for 2026, I think when Myles Garrett got traded, the expectation levels changed a little bit. They said five wins ain’t enough. To me, I want to see seven or eight wins. If you give me seven to eight wins, and you tell me that the team looks like they found a quarterback, I’ll shake your hand. If the offense is cooking and guys are looking like they’re running open, and you’ve got a young core, a lot of Cleveland Browns fans will come away from 2026 saying, ‘If I got a quarterback, if I feel like we can compete and our young guys are our best guys,’ everybody would come away ecstatic about what that season would mean,” Bush said.
Browns fans could always count on having one of the NFL’s best players no matter how bad the team was as a whole. That is no longer the case with Garrett traded to the Los Angeles Rams, and it has changed the projections for the 2026 season.
In addition, as has been the case for almost three decades, the Browns’ ultimate fate will be decided by their quarterback situation. Bush is clearly advocating for Shedeur Sanders to emerge from the quarterback competition with Deshaun Watson as the starter. If Sanders can then perform beyond expectations and prove he can be the long-term solution, the feeling about the team gets much better, and real playoff contention may arrive much sooner than anticipated.
As it stands, the Browns already have a wealth of emerging talent that is designed to peak at the same time. Led by Carson Schwesinger and Jared Verse on defense, and KC Concepcion, Denzel Boston, Quinshon Judkins and Harold Fannin Jr. on offense, the Browns have multiple foundational players to build around.
If Sanders should happen to join them, that would allow Cleveland to use its two first-round picks in the 2027 NFL Draft on positions other than quarterback, which would accelerate the Browns’ development even further.
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