I Think Shedeur Sanders Will Be The Browns Week 1 Starter

On night one of the 2025 NFL Draft, many people expected Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders to be a first-round pick, but it would not have been shocking if he would have had to wait until day two to hear his name called. But after rounds two and three on Friday, the football world was shocked and dumbfounded, wondering why Sanders still did not have an NFL home. After days of waiting, Sanders finally was selected in the fifth round at pick 144 in the draft by the Cleveland Browns, ending one of the shocking draft slides in recent memory.

But now that Sanders is a Brown, and despite being a fifth-round and second quarterback taken by Cleveland in this year's draft, I am going to go out on a limb and predict he will be the team's opening day starter under center this September.

Why? Well, let's look at the quarterback situation in Cleveland. Yes, it is quite the crowded room, but to me, nobody really stands out. Deshaun Watson is likely all but done in Cleveland after owner Jimmy Haslam essentially called the Watson era with the team a failed experiment. Not to mention, Watson is currently sidelined with a torn Achilles and will assuredly miss the 2025 season.

With Watson out of the picture, this is essentially a four-horse race between Sanders, Joe Flacco, Kenny Pickett, and another rookie in Oregon's Dillon Gabriel, who, when the team selected him in the third round, was when people really started to get loud about how the Sanders situation was being handled by the NFL and its teams because in no world did anyone seem to think Gabriel was a better prospect than Sanders.

It's all but certain Cleveland will not carry four quarterbacks on the roster, and therefore, I think it is very likely that former first-round pick Kenny Pickett will be traded before Week 1. While Joe Flacco may be considered the favorite to be the Browns starter based on his last stint with the team in the 2023 season, where he helped lead the team to the playoffs after coming in late in the season and going on to win the league's Comeback Player of the Year award, I think a lot of people are forgetting that we saw Flacco play just last season when he went to the Indianapolis Colts, and he looked like a shell of himself from the previous season.

I am sure Coach Kevin Stefanski will want to start Flacco; I just don't think he will be the same guy the Browns had in 2023.

Thus, to me this comes down to Sanders versus Gabriel, and based on what we have seen from them at the college level with the talent they had around them, I don't think there is any credible argument that shows Gabriel is the superior quarterback.

The Browns fanbase needs and wants a fresh start at quarterback, and because he is not your traditional fifth-round pick, I think Sanders will end up winning this competition. His arrival can give the fan base something to be excited about, and if he shows flashes of what he was able to do at Colorado, I think Cleveland says, Screw it, and decides they may as well see what they have in the player.

I am not saying Shedeur Sanders is going to be an excellent NFL quarterback, but I do truly believe that he is the best one on the Cleveland Browns roster at this time.

My prediction: Shedeur Sanders is the Cleveland Browns starting quarterback come Week 1 this season.