Kenny Pickett Trade: Big Boost for Shedeur Sanders as Aidan O’Connell’s Wrist Injury Helps Browns to Work With 3 QBs

The Cleveland Browns told us they were content keeping four quarterbacks on their 53-man roster. Then, opportunity struck.

Late Monday evening, NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo reported the Browns were trading quarterback Kenny Pickett to the Las Vegas Raiders for a 2026 fifth-round pick. The compensation is essentially equal to what Cleveland traded to the Philadelphia Eagles for Pickett, a 2025 fifth-round pick (No. 164 overall) and quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson, earlier this offseason.

This is the third time Pickett has been traded in the past 17 months. He was dealt from the Pittsburgh Steelers, who drafted him No. 20 overall in the 2022 NFL Draft, to Philadelphia in Mar. 2024. The Eagles sent him to the Browns on Mar. 10, 2025.

Holding three quarterbacks on your active roster is severely limiting from a roster-building perspective. So, while Cleveland’s front office repeatedly assured people they didn’t mind possessing four signal-callers, it never seemed realistic.

The Browns were simply waiting for the right moment to deal from their excess capital. When Aidan O’Connell fractured his wrist in the Raiders’ preseason finale, that time arrived. Las Vegas coughed up a draft choice, but was happy to do it to fill their QB2 vacancy. In the process, Cleveland cleared room for both Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders on the 53-man roster.

The Browns showed their affinity for Gabriel when they took him in the third round of the 2025 NFL Draft. The former Oregon standout was seen as a late fourth/early fifth-round selection by most analysts, but that didn’t stop Cleveland from taking him with the No. 94 pick. Fifty spots later, they capitalized on Sanders’ slide and made him a great value selection.

Sanders performed solidly against the Carolina Panthers, but played poorly against the Los Angeles Rams. And throughout their pair of preseason appearances, Gabriel was easily the more consistent player despite throwing a pick-six:

• Dillon Gabriel – 25/27 (67.6%), 272 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT; 2 sacks, 11 yards lost
• Shedeur Sanders – 17/29 (58.6%), 152 yards, 2 TD, 0 INT; 7 sacks, 47 yards lost

If Joe Flacco were benched tomorrow, Gabriel is the best guess for who would be handed the reins to Kevin Stefanski’s offense. His draft status gave him the edge in the competition with Sanders, but his strong showings earned him the backup job. That doesn’t mean Sanders’ time won’t eventually come. But he’ll need to get a better grasp of Cleveland’s scheme and stop taking so many sacks before usurping Gabriel on the depth chart.