The reason Dillon Gabriel was drafted before Shedeur Sanders

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The Cleveland Browns entered the 2025 NFL Draft with plenty of quarterback uncertainty; Deshaun Watson is out indefinitely with an Achilles injury, and the top of the depth chart might be veterans Joe Flacco and Kenny Pickett. The Browns needed to leave draft weekend with a quarterback — they left with two, in Oregon’s Dillon Gabriel and Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders, taken with the 94th and 144th picks, respectively.

On the latest episode of the “Scoop City” podcast, Dianna Russini and Chase Daniel were joined by The Athletic’s draft expert Dane Brugler to discuss why the Browns taking Gabriel at 94 was such a surprise, and why Sanders fell to the fifth round. Watch that discussion below.

A partial transcript has been edited for clarity and length. The full episode is available on YouTube below or in “Scoop City” feed on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Chase: Dane, I want to talk about quarterbacks because that’s what I know — and that’s what you know, along with a lot of other things. What was the biggest surprise pick for you, other than Shedeur?

Dane: Well, obviously, we knew Cam Ward was going to go No. 1 overall, and then in my final mock draft I had the Giants trading up for Jaxson Dart. I had Dart going 26 and then he went 25, so I missed by one. But it was interesting on Day 2 to see the order. We knew the Saints liked Tyler Shough a lot, so that one made sense. And then with Jalen Millroe, after I reported a couple of weeks ago that he got an invite to the draft, there was a lot of buzz with people saying, “Well, he must have assurances that he’s going in the top 50.” But then he ended up falling to 92, so that was interesting. For the Seahawks at that point, it was a no-brainer roll of the dice for them.

But Dillon Gabriel is probably the answer here. He’s a really smart player, and he’s like a point guard in the way he operates, but he’s undersized. He’s a perfect example of how important spring is for quarterbacks. Because I had multiple teams telling me that Gabriel was the most impressive interview they did throughout the process. That’s the Senior Bowl and combine — he was the most impressive interview that teams did. It’s not a huge surprise when you talk to his coaches at UCF, Oklahoma or Oregon. He showed up at Oregon this past year in his minivan, and one of the reasons he has a minivan is so he has enough room to take his teammates places. That’s the kind of leader that he is and the kind of guy that he is. He quickly became the captain of that team, and with quarterbacks — you know this better than anyone Chase — it’s an intangible position. The talent on the field is important, but how you operate behind the scenes is what led Gabriel to be a Day 2 pick. We’ll see how it plays out.

Chase: Speaking of what happens behind the scenes, obviously, there’s been a lot made of Shedeur Sanders’ draft fall. You had him graded as a late-first, early second-round pick. And when you watch him on film, I was thinking, ‘Hey, the second round is exactly where he should be.’ What do you think was the main reason he fell so far down draft boards?

Dane: It’s the juxtaposition of what we just talked about with Dillon Gabriel, because he crushed the spring, and Shedeur was the opposite. I heard you guys talk before about the recruiting process, you can’t go into this if you’re a prospect and think you have the leverage. That’s just not how this works, especially as a quarterback. There were only so many teams in for Shedeur Sanders in the first place, so the pool of potential landing spots was already small. But if you turn off some of those teams, and some of the other teams go with different quarterbacks, you’re talking about less than a handful of potential landing spots for you. We thought at one point maybe the Steelers in round three would take him, but they passed. Then when we got to day three with the Browns, and I don’t think they had any intention of drafting him, but in the fifth round, it’s like, “Why not? If it doesn’t work out, then O.K., we can cut him, we move on, and we lose a fifth-round pick, no big deal.” It’ll be interesting to keep an eye on the Browns’ training camp and how this plays out. We’ve seen it before where teams carry four quarterbacks into the season, but it would be a surprise if the Browns carry all four of these guys in Joe Flacco, Kenny Pickett, and then the two rookies in Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders.

Dianna: A lot of coaches, GMs and people in general talking around the league since the draft have been giving the media, and people who do what you and I do a hard time asking, “How could you guys be so wrong on Shedeur?” I’ve been pushing back because I don’t think anyone was wrong, I just think we didn’t have enough information about what happened in the spring. There were rumors and there was gossip, but I think teams were really trying to keep that private. And a lot of the people who were watching the film were just doing it based on his ability, which is why he was projected to go higher than he did. What would your response be to that when we’re getting pushback, with many saying, “The people who do this for a living have been so off on the Shedeur Sanders story.”

Dane: I remember joining you guys back in the fall and saying, “Shedeur’s not a top-five guy. That’s not the type of player we’re dealing with here. He’s more of a late one, early two. That’s what the talent says.” If Shedeur Sanders had Dillon Gabriel’s intangibles, I 100 percent believe he would have been drafted somewhere in the top-50 picks. We all talk to our NFL sources, and I don’t know about you guys but the sources I talked to still thought someone was going to take Shedeur. So we’re going based on the information that we’re getting from teams. And for a lot of teams, even if they weren’t going to do it, they still believed somebody in the NFL was going to take a chance on him. But it didn’t end up happening until much later than we anticipated.

The biggest key here is the fact that there were so few teams at the beginning. The Philadelphia Eagles, for example, were not going to do all the legwork needed on Shedeur because they didn’t need a quarterback. They probably thought, “O.K., we’re not going to take him at 32, and he’s probably not going to make it to us at 64. So we’re not going to do all of the legwork required on a prospect like this.” There are a lot of teams that were just out because they didn’t anticipate even having to consider him in the third, fourth or fifth round. The pool of teams that were potential landing spots was so few, and that really changed the whole dynamics of the situation.

You can listen to full episodes of Scoop City for free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and watch on YouTube.

(Top Photo: Soobum Im/Getty Images)

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