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PITTSBURGH – Rookie quarterbacks are rarely thrown into great situations, because great teams don’t usually need them. Most are thrust into the middle of messes.
And there aren’t many situations as messy as the one Dillon Gabriel is in right now.
Two starts into his NFL career, the Cleveland Browns’ 2025 third-round pick — and their potential quarterback of the future — might literally be in the league’s biggest no-win situation. It’s not just that he’s on a 1-5 team coming off a 3-14 season. And it’s not just that looming over his shoulder is one of the most high-profile backup quarterbacks in the league.
It’s that his passes are being dropped at an alarming rate by even his best receivers. It’s that the 5-foot-11 lefty is playing behind an offensive line that nearly got him killed in a 23-9 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday afternoon. And it’s that not only are reinforcements not coming, but his team might sell off some of its best players before the trade deadline in three weeks.
In other words, he’s trying to find himself and figure out how to be an NFL quarterback, all while being stuck in a situation that is very likely going to get much worse.
“He kept battling and he made some plays,” Browns coach Kevin Stefanski said. “We’ve just got to, around him, make some plays. We’ve got to be better.”
The Browns need to be significantly better, in fact, if Gabriel is going to have any chance at all. And the fact that he played reasonably well at times on Sunday is actually the silver lining behind Cleveland’s dark cloud.
Gabriel did make some plays and rose up, to a point, despite the chaos surrounding him. He took six sacks and was hit 16 times by one of the fiercest defenses in the league and still kept coming back for more.
“I don’t think anyone had any misunderstandings about who he was,” said an impressed Browns defensive end Myles Garrett. “I’m not surprised. That’s just the man he is.”
It wasn’t just the physical beating he took, though. There was an emotional toll to playing for the Browns on Sunday, too. Gabriel kept watching his receivers drop at least six catchable passes and probably another handful that good receivers (and tight ends, and running backs) would have somehow caught. His margin for error was nonexistent, yet any frustration was never evident. And apparently, in the huddle, his demeanor never changed.
“He was very composed in the pocket and in the huddle,” Browns guard Joel Bitonio said. “None of that was ever bad. I think he even found himself a little bit as we went along. There were some bright spots there.”
The Browns would rather see the 24-year-old out of Oregon prove his mettle in some other way. They’d prefer big-time throws instead of absorbing big-time hits. They want to see wins, not moral victories. This isn’t supposed to be a test to see how much physical and emotional pain he can withstand.
“I mean, there were a few times he got hit very hard,” Bitonio said. “You don’t know how those guys will respond, but he just popped up and was back in the huddle calling the next play. Business as usual.”
Unfortunately, that’s probably going to be Gabriel’s norm. He was drafted by one of the NFL’s worst franchises, and that pain comes in a lot of different shapes and forms. This is a Browns team that has had 12 starting quarterbacks over the last five seasons alone.
So, it’s going to take toughness and something else for Gabriel not to just become another name in a long and pretty forgettable list.
For what it’s worth, the rookie did show some flashes of something against the Steelers, just like he did one week ago in London when he made his first start against the Vikings. Against the Steelers, he threw for 221 yards while completing 29-of-52 passes — a ridiculous number of attempts. considering the pounding he took whenever he dropped back. And he actually looked good running the two-minute drill and getting a field goal right before halftime, going 9-of-12 for 59 yards on that drive.
It got worse in the second half, of course, because … well, these are the Browns. Gabriel completed just 16 of his 34 second-half passes. And a lot of those misses were drops.
“It’s hard to just say there’s drops,” Gabriel said. “There’s a lot of ways I can be better to help them and we can work through certain things. But within plays, it ain’t going to be perfect. It never will.”
It certainly won’t be this year, and Gabriel and the Browns know it deep down. They’re going nowhere this season and, in corners of their locker room where they wouldn’t want to say it out loud, they know that they’re looking more for signs of optimism than wins. They want to know whether Gabriel is their long-awaited savior, that quarterback they’ve been looking for since … Bernie Kosar, maybe? Or at least since they ran Baker Mayfield out of town?
And they need to see it regardless of the lack of support he’s getting.
“He’s got to operate regardless of what’s going on around you,” Stefanski said. “He’s just got to continue stacking these games, stack these reps.”
Dillon Gabriel was sacked six times and became familiar with T.J. Watt (right), who had three QB hits. (Joe Sargent/Getty Images)
The only problem, of course, is they don’t have much time to get something out of him. The Browns, because it’s what they do, made a mess of their quarterback plans the minute they drafted the high-profile Shedeur Sanders two rounds and 50 picks after Gabriel. It gave them two potential quarterbacks of the future, including one with an always ready marketing team around him and a loud group of supporters in both the stands and media.
Which means this situation isn’t nearly as clean as it is in, say, New York, where the Giants gave rookie quarterback Jaxson Dart the ball and cleared the field. Dart is the Giants’ future, both immediate and long-term, and nobody can get in his way.
The same isn’t true for Gabriel. Though a Browns source insisted this isn’t the case, it’s not hard to imagine embattled general manager Andrew Berry nudging Sanders into the lineup at some point this season to try to justify his surprise (and possibly ill-advised) pick.
Even if that doesn’t happen, Gabriel is only running out the clock until the end of the season. The Browns will likely have a high enough draft pick in April to take a better quarterback prospect in what is supposed to be a quarterback-rich draft.
Obviously, that’s not his primary concern. What Gabriel’s more worried about is somehow pulling his team out of its decades-long rut, despite the lack of … well, even competent help.
If Gabriel can grow in this environment, the Browns might really have something here, because he’s landed in a place where historically quarterback prospects go to die. If he can thrive, even a little, or grow just a tiny bit, the Browns might finally have their answer at the NFL’s most important position.
But it might take a little while for the growth to happen. The only way Gabriel can thrive in Cleveland is if he first finds a way to survive.
Ralph Vacchiano is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He spent six years covering the Giants and Jets for SNY TV in New York, and before that, 16 years covering the Giants and the NFL for the New York Daily News. Follow him on Twitter at @RalphVacchiano.
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