With a little more than two minutes remaining, Tyler Huntley managed to orchestrate one of the most improbable drives of the entire 2025 preseason. His miraculous performance put Andre Szmyt in the perfect position to nail a game-winning 37-yard field goal against the Rams. Unfortunately, the Cleveland Browns’ coaching staff wasn’t as impressed as everyone else was.
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In fact, Huntley’s heroics weren’t even enough to keep him in the building for a full 24 hours, as Cleveland announced that he had been cut from the roster the following afternoon. It’s a bad break for the Utah product, but according to CBS Sports’ NFL Draft expert, Ryan Wilson, it’s a positive sign for the team’s other quarterback, Shedeur Sanders.
“I think they’re not giving up on Shedeur Sanders,” Wilson suggested during the network’s most recent broadcast. “They knew that, coming in, this was going to be a developmental situation. A lot of the flaws we saw from Shedeur at Colorado, playing behind a bad offensive line where he would leave clean pockets, that was on full display yesterday. And that just reinforced what a lot of folks around the league already knew, that he wasn’t ready to start,” he added.
Believing that Kevin Stefanski’s original depth chart from July will prove to hold true in September, Wilson is adamant that Sanders will be the QB4 in Cleveland. The Browns’ other rookie signal caller, Dillon Gabriel, will slot ahead of him at the QB3 spot, while Kenny Pickett, once healthy, will be the premiere backup to Joe Flacco.
It’s not what many had hoped for following Sanders’ initial debut against the Carolina Panthers just a few weeks ago. But this same narrative has been touted for months, so it’s hard to be surprised by this outcome. To some, this will be a disappointment, but for others, including Stefanski and the Browns’ ownership, this was always inevitable.
Nevertheless, this decision does signal that franchise has at least some semblance of confidence in Sanders, as he would have otherwise been announced as a cut candidate himself. Perhaps the only surprise here is the fact that Cleveland is actually willing to roster four separate quarterbacks, a move that is rarely seen in professional football.
Moving forward, it will be up to the former Colorado Buffalo to make the most of any and all chances that he receives. Seeing as there are three signal callers ahead of him on the depth chart, the majority of those chances will likely come in the practice field rather than the game field.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that Cleveland is free from the media’s spyglass just yet. Should Flacco, or any of the team’s other signal callers, begin to falter, the chatter involving Sanders will likely increase almost immediately.
It’s just ironic that the most popular QB option that the Browns have had in recent years is also the one that is at the bottom of their depth chart. Considering the impoverished nature of the franchise, that’s a rather strange fact that Jimmy Haslam will have to accept.
