A back injury nobody saw coming
Dillon Gabriel threw three touchdown passes on Thursday night. Four days later he is on injured reserve.
The Cleveland Browns placed their second-year quarterback on IR at Sunday’s roster cutdown deadline with a back injury. He is designated to return, which still costs him the first four games of the regular season.
The timeline is odd. Gabriel played the first half of Cleveland’s 37-13 preseason win over New England and looked sharp, going 12 of 15 for 186 yards and three scores. The pain showed up Saturday. An MRI followed, ESPN reported, and the roster decision came the next afternoon.
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Three quarterbacks, one job already settled
Todd Monken named Deshaun Watson his starter before any of this happened. The first-year head coach kept three quarterbacks on the initial 53: Watson, Shedeur Sanders as the chief backup, and rookie Taylen Green out of Arkansas.
Sanders and Watson split first-team reps through camp and the opening two preseason games. Neither pulled away. Sanders went 120 of 212 for 1,400 yards last season with seven touchdowns against 10 interceptions, took 23 sacks and finished 3-4 as a starter. Gabriel’s rookie line was tidier and less productive: 110 of 185 for 937 yards, seven touchdowns, two picks, a 1-5 record across 10 games and an 80.8 passer rating.
Green, 23, was a sixth-round pick this year and barely played in August. Seven pass attempts, plus eight carries for a game-high 66 yards against the Patriots with a long of 30. Cleveland liked enough of that to hand him a roster spot over a veteran arm.
Watson’s fifth Cleveland season opens Sept. 13
The Browns traded for Watson before the 2022 season and signed him to five years and $230 million. An 11-game suspension opened his tenure. Injuries have shaped the rest of it. He is 9-10 as a Cleveland starter and has never played more than seven games in a season for the club.
He missed all of last year recovering from two operations on the same Achilles, the original tear coming in October 2024 and a second surgery following a setback during rehab.
Watson turns 31 the day after Cleveland opens at Jacksonville on Sept. 13. Gabriel, third on the depth chart out of Oregon and picked 94th overall in 2025, could be back on the field a month after that.
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