After Shedeur Sanders caught the imagination of everyone around the NFL with his preseason performance in Week 1, reality came crashing down around him.
Meanwhile, Dillon Gabriel showed in back-to-back weeks why the Cleveland Browns felt compelled to select him in this year’s third round ahead of Sanders.
Gabriel is never going to impress with any of his physical tools. He doesn’t look like a standard NFL quarterback. But it doesn’t take away from the fact that he understands how to play the position, what it takes to orchestrate an offense and where to deliver the football.
Once again, he showed all three things during his second preseason appearance. Gabriel threw for 129 yards and led two scoring drives against the Rams.
“I think it’s just continuing to take care of the football, it’s the only thing you talk about,” the rookie said when asked about not making mistakes and leading those drives. “I don’t want to be a coach’s speaker or be redundant, but taking care of the football, winning the turnover battle, being really good on third down, scoring touchdowns in the red area, and then dominating the middle eight. I think that’s all things that you want to be aware of and you want to do. You want to continue to be aggressive, and learn–in certain plays–when it’s time to give it a shot, or time to give it up and throw the ball away. Things I’m learning and want to do that for us to get better.”