Recently, the Cleveland Browns made the decision to trade quarterback Joe Flacco to the Cincinnati Bengals in exchange for draft compensation. The move comes amid a rough 1-4 start for the Browns, which has seen Flacco play some of the worst football of his career up to this point.
While the Browns' quarterback room has now been narrowed down to two rookies, starter Dillon Gabriel and backup Shedeur Sanders, the team still has a considerable number of players at that position on their payroll due to previous transactions.
“The Browns are currently paying EIGHT QBs,” noted Front Office Sports on X, formerly Twitter, citing a report from Spotrac. “Deshaun Watson, $35.9M, Jameis Winston, $2.2M, Dillon Gabriel, $1.1M, Joe Flacco, $999K, Shedeur Sanders, $955K, Bailey Zappe, $315K, Dorian Thompson-Robinson, $171K, Kenny Pickett, $8K.”
It's certainly not a great team-building strategy for an organization that is widely known to be among the most inept in the NFL landscape today.
A tough stretch for the Browns
The Cleveland Browns were hoping to wring some life out of Joe Flacco in an attempt to kickstart an offense that has been stagnant as far back as most fans can remember, but that didn't come to be, and Flacco is now in Cincinnati, hoping to resurrect a Bengals offense that has fallen off a cliff ever since Joe Burrow went down with an injury.
Dillon Gabriel started for the Browns this past week against the Minnesota Vikings in London and didn't perform terribly, although he took essentially no risks down the field, which put a hard ceiling on how effective the Cleveland offense was able to be.
Then of course there's Sanders, who most recently made headlines for pantomiming his way through an interview in a move that did nothing to dispel questions about his maturity that may have contributed to his low draft position in the first place.
All told, there have been better days in Cleveland. But not many.
