Do We Already Have on Odd Man Out in the Browns’ QB Competition?

Todd Monken refused to name a starting quarterback, and in doing so he told the show exactly what it wanted to hear about Cleveland's quarterback picture.

Monken, who Rich noted has turned into a perpetually hoarse and very fun sound bite, was asked at minicamp whether he would name a number one. His answer was a firm no. "Chances are it will not" happen yet, he said, before pivoting to praise. "I just don't see it after the way Shedeur's played and Deshaun's played. They both played well enough to earn the right to compete to start."

Pressed on whether anyone had shown him enough to make a call, Monken kept it simple. "I like both of them," he said. The pads aren't on yet. There has been no controlled scrimmage, no preseason game, nobody separating themselves upward or downward. He said he would have loved to name a starter and just can't get there.

Rich seized on the timeline. Monken talked about sorting out the reps "in the fall," and Rich wasn't buying the vagueness. A number one gets named in the preseason, he argued, unless Monken wants to walk into the opener at Jacksonville keeping the defense guessing about which mobile quarterback shows up.

The more interesting thread was who Monken left out. In naming Shedeur and Deshaun as the two competing, he pointedly did not mention Dillon Gabriel. The show connected that to the jersey news. Gabriel lost his number and is now wearing six, and on the depth chart he appears to have slid to number two behind a separating Shedeur.

"The Dillon Gabriel versus Shedeur days appear to be over," Rich said. Shedeur, in this read, has a real shot at the job.

There was a note of caution worth keeping. Monken stressed that nobody had separated themselves either way, good or bad, which suggests the room is closer than the narrative wants it to be. Someone on the show even mentioned a nice deep ball to Isaiah Bond. But the framing kept circling back to the same conclusion.

The crew couldn't resist a wish, either. Seattle is the Hard Knocks team this year, but a Cleveland quarterback room with this much drama would have made for better television.

Either way, the read on Gabriel was blunt. He lost his number, he sounds like the number two, and as Rich put it, he has a mountain to climb here.