The Cleveland Browns may have two Pro Bowl passers in their quarterback competition, but that hasn’t stopped the rest of the league from looking at the situation and seeing a mess.
CBS Sports recently labeled Cleveland as the NFL team with the worst quarterback situation, putting the Browns behind the New York Jets, Arizona Cardinals, Miami Dolphins and Atlanta Falcons. That kind of ranking helps explain why those teams, along with others, are being linked so heavily to next year’s draft class.
There’s a case to be made for Cleveland landing at the bottom of the list.
The favorite in the battle is Deshaun Watson, a soon-to-be 31-year old quarterback who is coming off two torn Achilles’, hasn’t played since midseason 2024, and hasn’t played actual good football since 2020. Watson’s 9-10 record over four years in Cleveland tells the story well enough, and the only reason he remains on the roster is the dead cap number that makes him basically impossible to move or cut.
Then there’s Shedeur Sanders, who started the second half of last season and finished with 56.6 percent completions, 1,400 passing yards, seven touchdowns and 10 interceptions. His record as a starter is 3-4.
He made the Pro Bowl as an alternate only because a wave of AFC quarterbacks declined the season-ending event. Joe Flacco, who opened last season as Cleveland’s starter before getting benched and eventually traded after a 1-3 record, also earned his first Pro Bowl nod last year.
The Browns’ third option is Dillon Gabriel, last year’s third-round pick, who also struggled badly in 2025. He completed 59.5 percent of his passes for 937 yards, seven touchdowns, two interceptions and a 1-5 record.
And then there’s Taylen Green, a sixth-round pick from Arkansas who brings elite athletic ability but still has plenty of development ahead before anyone can call him a polished pro passer.
That’s the backdrop entering the 2026 season, and it explains why Cleveland drew such a harsh evaluation at the game’s most important position.
The Browns hired Monken as their new head coach because of his reputation with quarterbacks, but this is a difficult assignment even by those standards. Over the summer, he called the team’s picks in 7-on-7 drills “embarrassing,” and he also admitted that arriving at training camp without a clear starter was far from ideal.
Monken, who is 60-years old, is already one of the oldest head coaches in the league, and this will be his first shot at running a team.
Under the current ownership, Cleveland has already gone through two one-and-done head coaches: Rob Chudzinski in 2013 and Freddie Kitchens in 2019. Like Monken, both had previously worked as the Browns’ offensive coordinator, with Kitchens doing it in an interim role, and all three were taking their first turn as NFL head coach.
Neither Chudzinski nor Kitchens has landed another permanent head coaching job since being fired.
For Monken, the challenge is obvious: the Browns’ quarterback room is thin, and the raw material he has to work with is well below league average.
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