For the Browns, it is a mostly hopeless situation at this point, no matter what decision the team makes next at quarterback. They want to keep Dillon Gabriel going as the starter, despite the fact that his struggles seem to be getting worse with each start, not better. He has completed only 58.6% of his passes and is averaging just 170.0 yards passing per game, for a rating of 80.4.
At Pro Football Focus, Gabriel has notched a grade of 49.9, which ranks 37th out of 37 graded quarterbacks this season.
The choice, then, is to stick with Gabriel and continue to watch his conservative yet inefficient style, or to pull the plug on him and essentially admit that the five games with him at the helm were a wasteful experiment. Making matters more untenable for the Browns is that QB2 Shedeur Sanders is in the background, and there has been a rising call for him to get a shot at the job.
Shedeur Sanders Pressure Mounts on Browns
That public pressure has been there for much of the season, but has gotten more intense and more widespread–you’d be hard-pressed to find a talking head on the national sports scene who has not taken a swipe at the Browns for their mismanagement of the quarterbacking situation and their unwarranted devotion to Gabriel.
Publicly, the Browns remain committed to starting Gabriel. Coach Kevin Stefanski was asked, as he always is, about the possibility of playing Sanders this week, and he demurred as he always does. He’s sticking with Gabriel.
Browns Not ‘Eager’ to Play Shedeur Sanders
If Browns fans are hoping that, behind the scenes, there is a shift going on that could result in Gabriel finally being benched and Sanders being elevated to starter, well they got some bad news from ESPN league insider Jeremy Fowler.
He wrote on Wednesday: “Coming out of the Week 9 bye, the Browns’ plan was to give Dillon Gabriel a fairly long runway of games to evaluate what they have in him. But as we see with young quarterbacks and teams in transition all the time, those plans can change.
“The public pressure in Cleveland is mounting. But I simply haven’t sensed that the Browns have been eager to turn to Shedeur Sanders.”
Offense Must Improve ‘Globally’
And so we can expect to see more Gabriel in the future. Certainly, he will be on the field in Week 11 against the Ravens, a team that has won three straight and is finally getting its defense together–Baltimore has held four straight foes below 20 points.
It will take a better overall effort offensively, not just from Gabriel, to hang with the Ravens, Stefanski said.
“It’s our job as coaches and certainly the players to go be productive on offense,” Stefanski said. “And it’s very, I understand that a lot of the focus goes to the quarterback position, but I look at it also globally and try to look at ways that we can improve across the board, whether it’s how we’re designing some of those plays, who were putting in those spots in some of those plays. I think that’s as big a part of it as well.”
Like Heavy Sports’s content? Be sure to follow us.
This article was originally published on Heavy Sports
The post Insider Reveals Browns’ Response to Shedeur Sanders ‘Public Pressure’ appeared first on Heavy Sports.