The Cleveland Browns have been coy about what they will do with their crowded quarterback room to date. We know that Deshaun Watson will be the starter and that means Shedeur Sanders will be his backup. But what we don’t know is what will become of the two players behind them on the depth chart, Dillon Gabriel and rookie Taylen Green.
Coach Todd Monken said on Thursday that the Browns “can’t keep everybody,” but also left open the possibility of keeping all four.
Green is a developmental project with impressive physical skills. He is 6-foot-6 and ran a 4.39 40-yard dash at the combine, the fastest for a quarterback in more than two decades. His speed was on display against the Patriots in Thursday’s final preseason game when he slipped through a tackle in the end zone that would have been a safety and turned it into a 30-yard run. But Green has a long, slow delivery that needs to be fixed before he can get on an NFL field as a thrower.
Gabriel was a surprise third-round pick in 2025, and got a chance to start last season. But the Browns went 1-5 with him at the helm, and his inability to throw the deep ball was glaringly obvious.
‘Dillon Gabriel to Dolphins?’
So, do the Browns keep all four? Bad enough that the team has arguably the worst quarterback situation in the NFL, but doubling down on a bad situation by keeping four of them seems egregious. The team wants to keep Green, and could risk putting him on the practice squad, but he would be eligible to be poached by another team that likes his potential.
The easier thing to do would be to trade Gabriel, who was very sharp against New England, going 12-for-15 passing with 186 yards and three touchdowns. And there might be a perfect trade partner emerging in Miami, where the Dolphins traded backup Quinn Ewers and cut Cam Miller, and now needs a QB2 behind Malik Willis.
As Daryl Ruiter of 92.3 The Fan in Cleveland wrote, “Dillon Gabriel to the Dolphins????”
Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald had a deal for Gabriel–or Green–as the No. 1 option for the Dolphins, writing, “With Dolphins on lookout for a No. 2, what quarterbacks could shake free today? Names widely speculated by many across the league include: 1). From Cleveland — either Dillon Gabriel or rookie Taylen Green (who took a 30 visit with Fins).”
Browns Should Make a Move
It has not been an easy training camp for Gabriel, after having competed for the starting job last year and left to take scant few reps this summer. He is not quite good enough yet to be a starter, but he is probably too good to be a third-stringer. That’s why a Browns trade–to the Dolphins or elsewhere–makes sense.
Gabriel said training camp was not frustrating, but was, “challenging.” He tried to stay positive.
As he said: “What really helped was just going into each week saying, ‘Hey, we’ll watch it on Sunday, let’s just stack good reps.’ But at some point, you want to see your hard work come to fruition in a real-life setting, and of course it wasn’t exactly what I wanted the first two preseason games. That’s probably the frustrating part on my end. But then being able to go out today with a bunch of great dudes and make the most of it, maxing the moment, that’s really what it’s all about.”
Browns Dillon Gabriel Trade Talk Heats Up After AFC Team’s Moves