The Cleveland Browns opened the preseason on a high note with a resounding 30-10 victory over the Carolina Panthers on Friday, led by fifth-round rookie Shedeur Sanders, who made the improbable start at quarterback and threw for 138 yards and a pair of touchdowns in his NFL debut.
While Sanders was highly impressive in his first live action, head coach Kevin Stefanski pointed out a pair of other rookies and heaped a lot of praise upon them during a Zoom call with the media.
Stefanski said in his media availability that he was impressed with a pair of undrafted rookie receivers in Luke Floriea and Gage Larvadain, who both received solid playing time so the team could evaluate their future.
Here is #Browns head coach on Zoom Saturday afternoon appraising the way Luke Floriea and Gage Larvadain played against the Panthers Friday night. Floriea has a hamstring injury, but Stefanski did not detail the severity of it. @MentorRedline pic.twitter.com/k6YFJPL0Ub
— Jeff Schudel (@jsproinsider) August 9, 2025
Floriea caught one of his two targets for 30 yards while Larvadain caught two of his three targets for 23 yards and also had a 4-yard rushing touchdown.
Floriea played five years at Kent State, with career numbers in Year 5, when he caught 44 passes for 699 yards and seven touchdowns.
Larvadain has been turning heads throughout camp with his explosiveness, and he had to go through three colleges just to get to this point.
He most recently played at South Carolina, where he caught 19 passes for 223 yards and a touchdown last season.
Larvadain was a true Swiss Army Knife in college, catching over 150 passes, two of which went for 88 and 99 yards, while he also handled over 30 carries, and returned punts and kickoffs.
We’re all rooting for these two, because Cleveland didn’t make any major upgrades at the wide receiver position in the offseason, and if either of them can stick around for a while to provide some explosiveness, it would provide a nice boost to the offense.
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