Dillon Gabriel is expected to start at QB against the Eagles on Saturday. The pressure is on the third-round draft pick after Shedeur Sanders was impressive in his debut against the Panthers last week. (Cleveland Browns)
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Editor's note: Tony Grossi is a Cleveland Browns and NFL analyst for TheLandOnDemand.com and 850 ESPN Cleveland. He has covered the Browns since 1984.
PHILADELPHIA, PA
After the Browns traded up in the fifth round and rescued the legendary draft free-fall of Shedeur Sanders by taking him with the 144th overall pick, I received text messages from two sources in the NFL universe. Their messages were almost identical.
“Why would the Browns do that to Dillon Gabriel?”
Their feeling from the start was that the gravitational pull of the immensely popular Sanders would be counter-productive to the quarterback the Browns evaluated higher and selected 50 spots and two rounds earlier.
Gabriel would be cast as a nuisance to Sanders, a villain even, who would steal reps from the pre-ordained next savior of the franchise and merely delay the inevitable deliverance of Sanders as QB2, on the way to QB1.
And that’s exactly what has happened.
Yet from the start, Gabriel embraced the addition of Sanders to the Browns’ overpopulated quarterback room. He projected the confidence of a quarterback who’d taken more snaps and thrown more passes for more yards in six seasons than any college quarterback in history.
But you can make the case that Gabriel indeed has been sapped of whatever superpowers he possessed entering his Browns career by the phenomenon that is Shedeur Sanders.
The original plan was for Gabriel to start against the lowly Carolina Panthers. Gabriel suffered hamstring issues, however, and Sanders was thrust into the assignment. And Sanders seized the opportunity by conducting three scoring drives in nine possessions in a 30-10 Browns win in Charlotte, NC.
So now Gabriel has to respond.
If he is cleared to play, Gabriel will start preseason Game 2 Saturday against the NFL defending-champion Philadelphia Eagles.
The Browns have held off confirming Gabriel as their starter to make certain his hamstring responded favorably after two joint practices against the Eagles.
If Gabriel plays, the Browns are likely to duplicate the format they laid out for Game 1 with Sanders. If so, Gabriel would play three quarters – about 50 offensive snaps – and QB5 Tyler Huntley would mop up the fourth quarter.
Coach Kevin Stefanski indicated this week that QB1 Joe Flacco, QB2 Kenny Pickett (hamstring), and QB4 Sanders (oblique) would not play.
That leaves Gabriel and Huntley.
If Gabriel had been healthy, he would have gotten the first start against the Panthers and Sanders would have started against the Eagles. Now Gabriel has to make his first start against the Eagles after two days of choppy practices against them.
Prior to the first joint workout on Wednesday, Stefanski was asked by a Philadelphia media member why the Browns liked Gabriel in the draft.
The coach responded: “[He] played a lot of football games. Good decision-maker. Accurate.”
And then Gabriel went out and had a 6-of-19 passing performance against the Eagles in 7-on-7 and 11-on-11 periods on Day 1. Gabriel followed on Thursday with a 1-of-5 passing day. A two-point try after a touchdown was thwarted when Gabriel’s pass deflected off Diontae Johnson’s chest and was intercepted by safety Andrew Mukuba.
Those numbers lowered Gabriel’s overall accuracy mark in 7-on-7 and 11-on-11 periods in training camp practices to 54.3% -- 87 of 160 – according to figures tabulated by the ESPN Cleveland Quarterback Tracker.
That’s by far the lowest completion percentage among the four quarterbacks.
Flacco is at 60.2% (91 of 151).
Sanders is at 70% (70 of 100).
Pickett, who has benefited from participating only in 7-on-7 periods the last two weeks, is at 75% (42 of 56).
So it would seem that the pressure is on Gabriel in possibly his only preseason start to justify the Browns’ evaluation of him as a better NFL prospect than Sanders.
It’s a critical point in his competition v. Sanders.
“Every day is critical though,” Gabriel said, sounding like Stefanski. “So you could have probably asked me that next week and the following. Every single day is critical, and you have to approach it every single day like that because that’s all you got, right? And you’re only as good as your last outing.
“So yes, every day everything’s critical, everything’s important and it’s got to be that way when you’re playing against high-level teams every single week.”
Flacco possibly could be named the regular-season starter as early as Tuesday, when the Browns embark on their final week of pre-season practices.
But the rest of their quarterback depth chart is still up in the air. Competition for QB2, QB3 and QB4 could continue right through the practice week leading up to the season-opener against the Cincinnati Bengals.
This could be Gabriel’s first and only pre-season start. Yes, the pressure is on him to show what he’s got.