BEREA, Ohio — As the Cleveland Browns trickled toward the field to stretch for their second of three minicamp practices, Andrew Berry sat at the conference room table of his office overlooking the field.
Ninety-one players were heading out to stretch.
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But the general manager knew the four orange-jerseyed roster members, rather than the dozens in brown, were most captivating the national media narrative.
Welcome to the 2025 Browns quarterback battle.
There’s fan nostalgia toward 40-year-old Joe Flacco, who led the Browns to the playoffs coming off the couch during the 2023 season. The Pittsburgh Steelers’ 2022 first-round draft pick, Kenny Pickett, is now in Cleveland learning the system and terminology of his once-division rival.
And then there are not one, but two, drafted rookie quarterbacks. Cleveland selected Dillon Gabriel in the third round before shocking the NFL to double back and select Shedeur Sanders in the fifth.
Taking two quarterbacks in 51 picks? Berry fielded the questions: Did he worry that drafting the high-profile Sanders so soon after Gabriel would undermine his third-round pick?
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“No,” said Berry, sporting a Browns scouting department polo that hinted at his more than 16 years of experience evaluating NFL talent. “The reality of it is everybody’s got to compete. Everybody’s got to earn their keep, so to speak.
“If you’re in any position room and you’re worried about a guy that’s taken or signed that’s out of your control, then you probably don’t have the mental wiring to be as competitive as you need to be for that spot.”
The Browns do not worry that Gabriel, Flacco or Pickett are worrying about Sanders’ arrival. They don’t worry either that Sanders’ draft slot has distracted the Colorado product from his own work, offensive coordinator Tommy Rees telling Yahoo Sports that despite “all the nonsense that people can talk about, he’s put his head down and done everything we’ve asked him to do.”
Speculation, conversation and projection will rage on in response to both 2025 political and societal trends that have little to do with Sanders and the Hall of Fame family pedigree that has much to do with him. Deion Sanders excelled in the NFL and embraced the flash during his playing days. He has continued to sparkle as the coach who oversaw his son’s four college years across Jackson State and Colorado.
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But Deion Sanders is not in Berea. So as the Browns wrapped up their rep-heavy practices and seven-part offensive installation this week, conversations centered instead on, well, playing under center. Coaches spent little energy on their players’ past résumés and more on the intricacies of play action, two-minute protocol and red-zone work.
Minicamp practice scripts weren’t only geared to develop rookie quarterbacks. But they did heavily emphasize positioning Gabriel and Sanders to develop confidence in their growing grasp of the offense while challenging each rookie in ways likely to prompt the mistakes best suited to cultivate learning opportunities.
Flacco, whose experience gives him an edge in the race to start Week 1, observed the development while largely sidelined by the coaching staff.
Flacco saw growth — and room for improvement typical of the rookie onboarding experience.
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“Some of the times, those completions, maybe they could have put the ball somewhere else,” Flacco said Wednesday after practice. “But I think for young quarterbacks, to be able to not try to force things and sometimes just take the checkdown and take the low guy can show a lot of growth and can show some maturity.
“I think they’ve both done that a little bit.”
Will it be enough?
With vet-rookie mix, Browns have multiple QB questions to answer
In a recent position meeting, coaches queued up a red-zone play that Sanders had quarterbacked.
“His thought process wasn’t wrong,” head coach Kevin Stefanski told Yahoo Sports, “but it wasn’t necessarily how you want to think about that route or that concept.”
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So a lesson ensued with teachers beyond Stefanski, Rees and quarterbacks coach Bill Musgrave.
Flacco had already shared perspective on footwork and reads during spring meetings; Pickett, too, had guided the rookies on how to shift between three-, five- and seven-step drops under center.
On this red-zone play, Deshaun Watson, sidelined due to injury, stepped up for constructive critique. He referenced his own experience running the same red-zone concept during a game, and he explained the need to peek the inside route before throwing outside. Watson emphasized how the footwork would make or break the play’s timing.
“When it’s everybody in there, it’s really graduate level,” Stefanski said. “Prior to those meetings and sometimes after, if time allows, get the rookies by themselves and then you slow it down.
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“It’s really kind of two different tracks.”
The quarterback battle, to a minicamp observer’s perspective, seems also to follow (at least) two different tracks.
The Browns have multiple questions to answer right now. In the wake of what is expected to be the end of Watson’s starting chapter in Cleveland, the Browns need to determine who will start Week 1 for them at quarterback and how they want to allocate their in-game quarterback opportunities throughout the 2025 season. They need to determine what their long-term plan is at quarterback. They’ll need to discern whether they want to package their two 2026 first-round picks to select one of the draft’s best signal-callers next year.
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These questions don’t all demand answers at the same time. Arguably none should be definitively answered this month. But the Browns structured minicamp in a way that reflects their multi-faceted goals.
With game play months away and a wide gap between the veteran and rookie quarterbacks’ current foundations, they set up “two-spot” practice sessions where veterans and rookies received simultaneous looks. The rookies handled less complicated play calls and shifts. When one field ran, rookies were far likelier to be at quarterback.
“Oftentimes the thought in the NFL is like, ‘OK, well your starter gets 70% of the reps, your backup gets 25% of the reps and your third guy gets 5% of the reps,” Berry told Yahoo Sports. “And the job of the backups is to be ready to play with no reps.
“It doesn’t have to be that way — especially in the spring when we have some flexibility.”
The Browns are “absolutely, absolutely, absolutely” open to keeping all four quarterbacks on their 53-man roster “if they all play well enough,” Berry said, citing the New England Patriots carrying four quarterbacks during Tom Brady’s rookie year in 2000. Cleveland is not concerned at this juncture about skill players or linemen falling behind as they learn multiple different quarterbacks’ styles.
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Flacco, Pickett and Gabriel all took first-team snaps during spring practices, though Flacco’s were intentionally limited by the coaching staff.
“The hope is that your offense has enough breadth to it where you can accomplish anything you want to accomplish with any of those quarterbacks,” Stefanski told Yahoo Sports. “Certainly, you’d lean into one area more or less based on the guy who’s under center or in the shotgun.
“But we don’t think that it’s a limiting factor in any way.”
Where Browns’ QB competition stands, and how coaches will ultimately decide it
The Browns like to deflect questions about their decision on a Week 1 starter. The decision “seems so far off,” Stefanski says.
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But the day will come. So how will they decide who starts their Sept. 7 opener against the Cincinnati Bengals?
“Decision-making and processing,” Rees said. Berry agreed that the team seeks “someone who is an efficient operator and will make good decisions with the football.”
Cleveland’s coaching staff, front office and roster know that play-making is crucial in the NFL, superior physical skill sets and past experience translating well to game-altering situations.
They know also: Rookie quarterbacks in the NFL often flounder when their play-callers don’t acclimate them gradually to the faster-speed processing of the professional game. So as Stefanski says play-time decisions will be “very, very specifically based on what you see in practice, what you see in games, what you see in the meeting room … [on] how guys are performing,” it’s not presumptuous to understand who has the edge in this battle.
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Injuries notwithstanding, there’s reason to consider Flacco the favorite to start Week 1 as of mid-June. He knows Stefanski’s offense best, he knows NFL defenses best and he’s built a trust with the organization based off past performances. If the Browns want a decision-maker and operator, he can do that. Unless or until he turns the ball over to an untenable point, he could help carry the team through a daunting first six weeks against the Bengals, Baltimore Ravens, Green Bay Packers, Detroit Lions, Minnesota Vikings and Steelers.
Pickett should also be considered a viable Week 1 option. He in theory has more upside for the franchise, though a Sam Darnold-like resurgence would more likely lead to the Browns exploring a trade to reclaim assets than extending him long-term. Pickett has started 25 pro games and would likely be better positioned to succeed now than he was in the anemic Steelers offense he ran as a rookie. The Browns value his process-oriented focus and commitment to understanding the under-center concepts newer to him.
“The more reps you get, the more comfortable you’ll be,” Pickett said. “Unfortunately in a situation like this, you may only get one play, one time, the entire camp. So you got to try to maximize as much as you can.”
Gabriel’s acclimation has impressed the Browns deeply. His high-level processing and six-year college foundation has readied him to be treated, in some ways, “basically like a veteran,” Berry said. Rees praised Gabriel as a player who “you don’t ever really need to correct him twice.” The first-team reps he received in minicamp reflected his quick grasp, with a Wednesday red-zone needle threaded to receiver Jaelen Gill in the back of the end zone the type of anticipation the Browns want to see from the room.
And Sanders? His play-making and willingness to air it out, paired with the charisma that’s engaged teammates from Flacco to backup defensive backs alike, should contribute to the foundation he’s building. The Browns are praising his work ethic even as they did not give him first-team snaps through the spring — as is standard for fifth-round rookies.
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Sanders’ deep ball to Gage Larvadain was the flashiest throw made Tuesday, and he caught veteran defensive back Damontae Kazee’s attention with more subtle progress.
“He’s selling me a little bit, selling me down back there,” Kazee told Yahoo Sports of Sanders’ red-zone work. “Good look-off, came back quick with, so it’s perfect.”
Perfect, the Browns know, is an unrealistic goal both for their quarterbacks’ performance and for the plays their coaches will script. Problems will arise. Like the Browns’ depth chart, over time, they can be solved.
“Be able to solve problems on the field when they don’t get the ideal look,” Rees told Yahoo Sports. “Let’s just show that we’re making the right decision and we’re putting the ball where it’s supposed to be and we’ll figure out all the other parts.
“Every time we have an opportunity to solve a problem, make a decision — we’re looking to make the right one.”
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