The Browns finished 3-14 last season and things aren’t expected to improve much in 2025-26. On DraftKings Sportsbook, Cleveland is a -140 favorite for under 5.5 wins and the club is a huge -1600 favorite to miss the playoffs. Furthermore, the Browns carry the second-worst odds to win the Super Bowl at +300000.
The main concern for the Browns this season is quarterback play. With Deshaun Watson expected to miss the season as he recovers from two Achilles injuries, it is a four-man battle for the Browns’ starting quarterback job. On the roster, Cleveland has veterans Joe Flacco and Kenny Pickett, and rookies Dillon Gabriel and Sheduer Sanders.
Gabriel and Sanders were selected in the third and fifth rounds of this past NFL Draft, respectively, and both rookies have great potential upside. As for the veterans, Flacco led the Browns to the playoffs in 2023, but he is now 40-years-old and finished with a 2-4 record as a starter with the Colts last season. Meanwhile, Pickett owns a 15-10 record as a starter in the NFL and while he has struggled with efficiency throughout his career, the former first-round pick is still only 27-years-old.
There is speculation that all four quarterbacks will make Cleveland’s final roster and all of these quarterbacks have been seeing work during Browns’ training camp. ESPN’s Daniel Oyefusi tracked how many sets of team drills each quarterback saw during the first week of training camp and according to the insider, it was Gabriel with 12, Pickett with 11, Sanders with 10 and Flacco with nine.
The Browns are clearly weighing all their options, but the question is, does Cleveland want to attempt to win games right out the gate with one of their more experienced veterans or do they want to develop one of their rookies quickly, even though it will likely result in less team success?
After being one of the NFL’s worst teams last season, the Browns going with a win now approach to begin the season feels like the most likely scenario. This makes Pickett the top candidate to open the season as the team’s starting quarterback and there is a chance he would have led the team in reps during the first week of training camp if he didn’t suffer a hamstring injury this past Saturday. ESPN’s Adam Schefter is reporting that Pickett will be re-evaluated in week and while this is frustrating news for the quarterback, the regular season is still over a month away and this speed bump shouldn’t derail Pickett from winning the starting job.
Pickett should be the quarterback under center for the Browns come Week 1, but does that mean he is a player we should be targeting in fantasy drafts this summer? Below I dive into Pickett’s potential fantasy outlook if he indeed wins the job.
Fantasy Outlook
Pickett has struggled to be an efficient passer since joining the NFL in 2021. For his career, Pickett owns an ugly 62.4% completion percentage and his touchdown to interception ratio is a brutal 15-15. The 27-year-old has displayed some rushing upside at times, but it has been rare, as Pickett has only rushed 106 times 1,608 career snaps.
Pickett finished with a decent 16 FPTS in his lone start with the Eagles last season, but this came in a meaningless Week 17 matchup against the Cowboys, who had nothing at stake. The veteran averaged only 0.52 FPTS per snap last season and Pickett has embarrassingly never scored more than 19 FPTS in his 25 career starts.
Pickett does have a solid group of pass catchers at his disposal in Cleveland, but this offense should struggle as a whole and like most Browns’ quarterbacks over the last few years, Pickett is not a player worth considering in season long fantasy drafts.
