Todd Monken inherited a lot of things when he took the Browns job, and a settled quarterback room wasn't one of them. Deshaun Watson, Shedeur Sanders, Dillon Gabriel and sixth-round rookie Taylen Green are all in the mix for reps this summer, and per ESPN, Monken isn't rushing to name a starter. He wants to see it in pads, and possibly even preseason games, before making a call.
Watson's side of this is still the wild card. He's 30, he tore his Achilles and missed all of 2025, and in the 19 games he's actually played since Cleveland traded three first-round picks and handed him a fully guaranteed 5-year, $230 million deal, he's 9-10 with 19 touchdowns. That's the whole résumé for one of the most expensive quarterbacks in league history. Monken's spring praise about Watson's athleticism showing up again is nice, but it doesn't erase the injury history or the box score.
Sanders is the more interesting story for anyone who watched last season. He went from an emergency fill-in in Week 11, complete with a 4-of-16, 47-yard nightmare of a first outing, to a 3-4 finish that included division wins over Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. Coaches like the growth: Monken says he's making quicker decisions and just needs to cut down on the lost-yardage plays. The one red flag is his average time to throw, which sat at 3.24 seconds, longest among the 38 qualifying starters in 2025. That's a sack and a strip-sack waiting to happen behind a Browns line that isn't exactly a fortress.
Gabriel, last year's third-round pick, is the forgotten man here despite GM Andrew Berry publicly backing his future. He played it safe as a rookie, posting the lowest average air yards per attempt among qualifying starters, and he's currently ticketed for the No. 3 job behind Watson and Sanders. Green, the athletic 6-foot-5 developmental piece out of Arkansas, is almost certainly redshirting as a rookie while Monken cleans up his mechanics.
For fantasy purposes, this is about as unattractive a quarterback situation as exists in the league. Sanders is currently going off the board around ADP 231 and sitting as QB34 in early dynasty rankings, which tells you the market already assumes he's a two-QB or superflex-only asset at best. If he wins the job outright, there's streamer appeal in juicy matchups given the defensive garbage-time volume he racked up last year, but he shouldn't be anywhere near a single-QB roster to start the season.
Watson is arguably the worse fantasy bet even if he wins the competition. Coming off an Achilles tear at 30, with a career completion and efficiency profile that's never translated to consistent fantasy production, he's a name-value dart throw at best in deep leagues. The betting market backs up the caution here too, with Cleveland still priced as one of the league's lower win-total teams, which is its own signal that nobody expects this passing game to carry fantasy rosters regardless of who's under center.
The real fallout is on the skill-position guys. Whoever wins this job, expect a run-heavy, defense-first offense that leans on David Njoku and the backfield more than any Browns quarterback. That makes drafting Cleveland pass-catchers a patience game too, since target volume won't stabilize until the starter is locked in and stays healthy for more than a month at a time.
Watch the beat reports out of camp closely over the next few weeks. If Sanders keeps building on last year's late-season flashes and Watson's practice reps look limited in any way, that's the signal to buy Sanders as a speculative superflex stash. If Watson looks fully explosive in padded work, this whole competition could be more about optics than an actual open battle, and fantasy managers should treat both as touchdown-dependent flex-only options heading into Week 1.