It’s only May, so there is plenty of time to let the Cleveland Browns’ 4-man quarterback competition play itself out as Joe Flacco, Kenny Pickett, Dillon Gabriel, and Shedeur Sanders are all still getting their feet wet in their new city and new organization.
There were plenty of reports out of OTAs detailing how good all of them looked at times, but one insider recently revealed what the most likely scenario is under center for Week 1.
During an appearance on The Ultimate Cleveland Sports Show, Cleveland.com’s Mary Kay Cabot said she believes Flacco will start the early portion of the season.
“I think that they’ve got to go with a player that has experience. Now it will be a fair competition, but I just think in the end, someone who has been through the NFL fire before is probably going to be in the driver’s seat on opening day.”
Cabot touched on the fact that the first half of Cleveland’s schedule is brutal, which would not be an ideal scenario to subject a third or fifth-round rookie to, especially after the Browns averaged a league-worst 15.2 points per game last season.
It’s going to be hard for this fanbase to have reasonable expectations for either of these rookies, but they weren’t first-round picks and aren’t stepping into an enviable situation.
Flacco or Pickett makes the most sense as a starter for at least the first half of the season, but it’s certainly possible the team could deploy all four QBs at some point to get a clearer picture about whether or not it needs to draft a QB in 2026.
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