As Cleveland Browns quarterback competition looms large, new head coach Todd Monken takes firm stance on handling the rep distribution. Isn't ready to name an initial leader in the clubhouse.
In 2025, the Cleveland Browns oversaw what then-head coach Kevin Stefanski had called a four-way competition for starting quarterback.
In actuality, it wound up being more of two separate competitions; one for the starting role and one to serve as primary backup. That's on top of the battle dragging on deep into the summer and ultimately training camp.
New Browns head coach Todd Monken is taking a different approach to his looming quarterback competition, starting with making it known immediately that the rep share between the team's current QBs won't be totally equal.
"Well, I wouldn't say they're going to be evenly dispersed," Monken asserted at the NFL's annual meetings on Tuesday. "But we'll definitely disperse them to give ourselves a chance to at least evaluate who we have on the roster, whoever that might be as we go through the off-season."
As things stand right now, Deshaun Watson is due back for the franchise in 2026, after fully recovering from a twice-ruptured Achilles tear from the 2024 season. He'll face some stiff competition from second-year QBs Shedeur Sanders β who finished last season as the starter β and Dillon Gabriel β who made six starts before being replaced by Sanders after he suffered a concussion.
General manager Andrew Berry made it known in Phoenix this week that the Browns could still add another QB as well, noting that if they did, the player would probably skew younger.
Whatever the final group looks like by the end of next month, Monken is setting the tone for the looming battle, making it very clear that all QB competitions are not created equal. That doesn't mean the rep share can't change, though.
The number of reps a player gets doesn't eliminate competition," Monken said. "It's just in a given day, let's say for instance, you want to see a quarterback with the first group, the second group, the third group. Well, are you going to divide those reps up evenly? Are you going to divide up the reps everywhere evenly? I don't see it that way."
The other major difference between last year's competition and this year's is that Monken wants to have a clearly picture of who his QB1 is leading into training camp, unlike last year, when it rolled into late summer. There's a very valid reason he wants that.
"You'd love to be able to come out of the spring with a depth chart," said Monken, "That doesn't mean there's still not competition, but I do think you have to narrow the reps or at least balance up the reps of who you anticipate has come out of the spring, certainly in a position to be a starter."
So which signal caller will start at the front of the pack? There's a method to the madness for the 60-year-old.
"What we've seen in the past and where the year ended last year," Monken said of how they'll set the depth chart up initially.
While that may lead some to think Sanders will be first up as QB1, given his intriguing seven game effort to close out last season, Monken wasn't ready to guarantee that just yet.
"I'm not ready to say that yet," he said. "I just said the reps can't be divided up evenly. There's no chance. At least on a daily basis."
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