2025 NFL Preview: Cleveland Browns

CLEVELAND BROWNS

NFL Futures Odds at BetOnline:

To Win Super Bowl  +20000 (200-1)
To Win AFC Championship  +7500
To Win AFC North  +2200
Regular Season Wins - Under 5.5 -130, Over 5.5 +100

As Shedeur Sanders was sliding through the first round of the NFL Draft, a commentator named Peter Schrager, formerly of NFL Network but now with ESPN, probably made the most significant remark of the evening. 

While sitting in with the panel on a special edition of the network's popular "Pat McAfee Show," Schrager pointed out that while he had heard a lot of hype about young Sanders from other members of the media, who expected him to be among the very first players chosen, he was not hearing that kind of buzz from the teams themselves, and that was something of a concern.

Even for the uninitiated, things were becoming much more explainable at that point. 

And I was reminded of the polls that were being trotted out before the 2024 election, which showed that Kamala Harris was even or ahead of Donald Trump, which didn't turn out to be the case at all. 

Those polls helped create the narrative the media wanted to promote. It seems we have the same situation here. It's not too hard to co-opt them; Deion succeeded to a considerable extent training them to call him "Coach Prime," didn't he?

So it looks like we've got some unreliable narrators.

Shedeur Sanders has turned out to be a cautionary tale . . . 

But as for what caused him to slip all the way down to the fifth round, this is not a simple matter of the press overestimating his final value, as reflected in his ultimate draft position. 

There are obviously a number of factors, and when examining them for what they are, you might come to the conclusion that it wasn't a slide at all. Maybe he went where he was supposed to go the whole time. 

To begin with, as someone who is currently working on a book about NFL scouting, I can tell you, from the people I talked with, that scouts don't buy into the kind of "act" Shedeur threw out there. This is not fiction.

You see, it's one thing for a wide receiver or even a defensive back to be a prima donna. That's almost expected in this day and age. 

But quarterback is a different story entirely. The scouts are looking for a different type of individual. 

This is supposed to be a true team leader - in games, in practices, in the quarterback room, in public.

No one needs a team leader for whom bling appears to be a main priority; who's been known to criticize teammates, shows up to practice in a Rolls Royce, offers the whole "me first" persona, and then turns around and speaks of how essential he is to "changing the culture" of whatever team he goes to. 

No one needs to hear him talk like one of those boxers calling attention to himself to hype a fight. That's not confidence. It's cockiness, and it's so empty you can see right through it. This is the NFL. No one in a decision-making position gives a s**t about all that.

Oh, and no one - I repeat, NO ONE - needs for this to come gift-wrapped with a meddling father who seems totally dedicated to being a pain in the ass. 

Yeah, "Coach Prime" may have been a problem

Deion indicated very early in the process that he was going to try to dictate which teams could or could not draft is son. That, of course, came at a time when he was under the impression that Shedeur was going to be among the first three players taken. So of course his role as an "advisor" was a problem that was going to be hard to overcome. 

There was a general suspicion that Deion might pose a headache to the coach of any team that drafted his son. Remember, he's got some of the press wrapped around his finger. They are always going to want to get a quote from him when it comes to anything having to do with Shedeur. 

Deion might even try to undermine the coach so that he could figure out a way to slide into that job himself. Hey listen, if he possessed the leverage, anything would be possible.

Well, he doesn't have the leverage, as it turns out. 

You can't do everything wrong for the scouts

Despite Shedeur's claims of turning around programs "again and again and again," he didn't seem to have a command of the complexities of offenses and defenses. At least that's the implication of what happened during the pre-draft process. 

It was bad enough that young Sanders did not work out at the NFL combine or the Senior Bowl, and wasn't available until his pro day. But word is that he flunked a significant number of interviews, where he was asked some pointed questions by NFL coaches and apparently didn't answer them to anyone's satisfaction. He seemed entitled as well, and acted as if he was the guy in control.

When it comes to the evaluation process, that doesn't work. 

So what about Shedeur's tools? 

There's another part of this - the physical part - and it's something worth going over.

First of all, when a guy you're connecting with (Travis Hunter) wins the Heisman Trophy, you're obviously doing something right. And Shedeur does not lack for size at the position.

But he was known as one of those quarterbacks who threw passes that were predominantly short or even behind the line of scrimmage. He got sacked an awful lot, indicating it took him a while to make decisions, and wasn't really a big threat to run in order to keep defenses honest.

So he might have had a long way to go right from the beginning. 

Kiper's big bet

I can't be certain that this overhype began with Mel Kiper. But he remains Shedeur's biggest champion. And I must admit that his work on NFL Draft analysis, which goes back many years, has gone a long way toward making the event the spectacle it is today.

This whole pre-draft thing in the media is very much a "follow-the-leader" exercise, and you can see that as mock drafts tend to be somewhat similar as the actual draft approaches. So it is not surprising that if Sanders is listed very highly in one draft, he'll also be listed highly in others. 

Among the NFL scouts, Kiper is seen more or less as a commercialized version of a "talent evaluator" for public consumption, not unlike the way Jimmy the Greek was presented as an "oddsmaker" for many years. His opinions are his opinions and don't necessarily reflect that of the NFL teams.

But he's also got a touch of the narcissist in him and thus he is not going to admit if he's been horribly wrong on something. In this particular instance, he was way wrong on his prediction, which was that Shedeur would go third to the New York Giants, and that Sanders was indeed not the #1 or #2 quarterback prospect, but that he was well down the list. 

The truth of the matter is that after what is rumored to have been a disastrous interview, the Giants may have taken him off their board entirely, If you talk to any NFL scout or personnel executive, he will tell you that once a player is off the board, he is OFF the board, which means that no matter how things shake out, they're not taking him. You certainly saw that happening. I tend to believe that his selection by the Browns, two rounds after they had already taken Dillon Gabriel, may have been an "owner's pick," meaning that the owner stepped in and basically ordered that he be taken. 

If that hadn't happened, he may have slipped out the draft altogether. 

I'm sitting here with one pre-draft magazine, published well in advance, where QBs forecast to be undrafted free agents went ahead of the Sanders kid. 

But what did Kiper do? He doubled down. He decided to, in effect, gaslight the NFL, going as far as to assert that their talent evaluators have been "clueless" about quarterbacks for years, and that this is one of those cases. This will follow him around for a while, and I don't know how it will affect his ability to get information from real sources in the future.

But here's the potential beauty of this whole process: Kiper could still possibly win on his "bet." That's because this whole thing is just getting started. When you put the pads on and step onto the field for practice in an NFL camp, it's a whole new ballgame. 

>Shedeur's short-term future with the Browns 

So here we are in the next chapter, and if you really look at this objectively, you might conclude that Shedeur Sanders couldn't be in a better place.

The counterargument might be that Sanders is fifth on the depth chart in what is a crowded quarterback room. But you know that old saying: "If you have five quarterbacks it means you have no quarterback." 

Looking at this situation:

* DeShaun Watson, who signed a huge free agent contract with the team but has produced almost nothing, has suffered two Achilles injuries and it is unclear whether he'll be able to play this year at all. Cleveland management may determine that it is better to cut bait, although that leaves a cap hit. Either way, he's not likely to be a big factor.

* Joe Flacco, who won the Comeback Player of the Year with the Browns a couple of seasons ago, is 40 years old and a stopgap at best. However, he started mini-camp as #1 on the depth chart.

* Kenny Pickett, a former first-round pick of the Steelers, did not show Mike Tomlin he could be a starting QB in the NFL, then won a Super Bowl as Jalen Hurts' backup in Philadelphia before being traded to Cleveland. He's going to try to win the starting job, but if he doesn't, he may have some trade value, although we didn't say a lot of it. 

* Dillon Gabriel was drafted on the third round, two rounds before Sanders. The Browns apparently liked Gabriel's experience (64 collegiate games), ability to play for different programs (UCF, Oklahoma, Oregon) and leadership ability. Plus, he was pretty damn good in the interviews. But he doesn't really have NFL size, measuring below six feet and just over 200 pounds at the combine. So his NFL status is far from a "given."

* And then there's Sanders, who does bring some accuracy into the picture. 

Our point is that no one really has any command over the job.

According to the folks at BetOnline, Cleveland is +2200 to win the AFC North and -130 to win five games or fewer. If that holds, it's quite likely they are going to be out of the playoff race rather early. And if that happens, they're going to look to see what people can do.

In that case, Flacco won't be part of it because he's not part of their future. Pickett may get a shot, if he's still around. But there are a lot of people who think they've seen enough of him to know what they've got. Watson may be gone by this time. 

Gabriel will get a chance at some point, but he may not have some of the physical attributes that are necessary to play on a regular basis in the NFL. 

Sanders may not even make the 53-man roster, or the practice squad for that matter. But if he manages to stick around, there's reason to believe that at some point in the season he'll have the opportunity to start a game or two. 

And when that happens, he'll have the chance to show that the critics were wrong, and (yikes) Mel Kiper was right. 

Shedeur Sanders is priced at +1800 to be named offensive rookie of the year at BetOnline.ag, where you've got plenty of NFL Futures wagers to look through in advance of the 2025 season...... It's very easy to sign up for an account; use your debit or credit card, or choose any of sixteen different cryptocurrency options they have available, including Bitcoin!