Now that the regular season is officially over, it is time for the teams that didn’t make it into the playoffs to start evaluating the talent they do have on the team, and prepare for the NFL Draft to see who they want to target to attempt to draft. This is never more true year after year for the Cleveland Browns. Their historic list of starting Quarterbacks grew a little bit more this year as they started Joe Flacco at the beginning of the season, moved to Rookie Dillon Gabriel for a handful of weeks, and finished the season with Rookie Shedeur Sanders. Now the question becomes yet AGAIN for the Browns, what to do at the position moving forward. Flacco is obviously gone as they sent him away during the season. If you ask me, Sanders looked more the part than Dillon did during their respective starts. A lot of years it is a noticeable cut and dry decision to move on from a QB, but I don’t think that is the case this time.

I think Shedeur did enough to deserve a full offseason, and full regular season with a true chance at being the number one guy. We’ve seen a lot of Cleveland Quarterbacks, and most of them played a lot worse than Sanders did. He also brought an excitement to the huddle, and the game in general when he finally got his shot. I also don’t think there are any “generational” QB’s coming out in the draft this year. He’s had to deal with little to no weapons on the outside, constant drops, and a ruined offensive line throughout the season. Yes, he threw far too many picks for the amount of games he played, but he was a Rookie. Go look at what Peyton Manning did with that stat in his Rookie season.

If I’m Cleveland, the first thing I’m bringing in is an offensive minded head coach to fill the empty seat left by the firing of Kevin Stefanski. When you have a young Quarterback, it is paramount to his growth and success to have a head coach with a progressive offensive philosophy. A guy who has proven success in QB development and growth. The next thing I’m doing as a franchise, is start from the inside out and going out and getting top offensive line talent to protect your QB, and at the same time create depth on that unit in case something like this year is covered better if it happens again. After that is taken care of, you HAVE to go out and get a true big time number one Wide Receiver, and I’d probably go get a top 1a or true number two WR to go along with those great Tight Ends you already have. The running game seems to be there after Judkins is healthy again. Give the kid real weapons on the outside. I think if you do those things, with the great Rookie class you had last year, and how good the defense is, you could compete for the AFC North right away, and most likely win it in the next year or two. Super Bowl contention is a different animal, but you have to start somewhere, and targeting the division title is where you should start.