Cleveland Browns Team Preview 25-26

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  • By Jon Mosales

    Last Updated on June 17, 2025 2:44 pm by Jon Mosales | Published: June 4, 2025

    The poor sad-sack Browns are back to being a joke after a few seasons of near-contending.  You can rebuild a franchise with one great move, see the Washington Commanders, but you can also destroy a franchise with one.  The Deshaun Watson saga continues to linger over all moves and at least with him tearing his Achilles multiple times, he will only weigh down the team on paper and not on the field.  Desperation does weird things to a team and the Browns reek of it.  The boldest move they made recently was trading back in the draft and not taking Travis Hunter second overall.  Regardless of what you think about that move, it’s indicative of the team trying to catch two birds with one stone.  The Browns were a QB away and now there are everything away.  The football gods can be cruel and while they mostly take away, sometimes they do give.  The Browns reluctantly took Shadeur Sanders in the 5th round, who wasn’t even the first QB CLE drafted, but if he ends up as the starter, the Browns could finally be headed in the right direction.

    It’s hard to properly explain how inept the Browns were on offense last season because the mini-Jameis Winston run is what most people remember.  They finished 28th or worse in points scored, yards, passing TDs, yards-per-pass, rushing attempts/ rushing yards/rushing TDs.  Nick Chubb came back midseason, but he looked like a shell of his former self and the once vaunted o-line was 21st with a 36.0% pressure rate and 30th with a 9.1% sack rate.  With no QB and no run game, what did we really expect?

    There are signs of life though.  Jerry Jeudy finally made the leap (WR12), despite finishing outside the top-24 in each of the first nine weeks.  Jeudy had his numbers propped by a crazy pass-happy system as CLE threw the ball more than any other team in the league (42.8 per-game).  You have to believe CLE is desperate to add balance to their run/pass split of 35/65 and they made that clear when they drafted RB Quinshon Judkins in the second round.  There are pieces that could make this a fun fantasy offense, but it’s not self-sufficient and needs a QB to connect all the pieces.  David Njoku finally went from promising TE to fulfilling promise as he finished 5th in fantasy points per game (10.6) and TE11 overall in 11 games.  His numbers were a little buoyed up by the end of season target-rich environment when he had 40 targets over three games.  My favorite hiding-in-pain site fantasy target is Cedric Tillman.  He was only the WR85, but From Weeks 7-12, Tillman averaged 12.8 fantasy points per game (WR16), totaling 330 receiving yards and clearly outproducing Jerry Jeudy during that stretch.  He’s got the goods, but a concussion derailed his season and now he will have Sanders or old-hand Joe Flacco slinging the ball, which are both upgrades over Watson.  It’s always hard to differentiate flash-in-the-plan from a real breakthrough, but with Tillman, I’m leaning towards him having legitimate staying power.  With Jeudy, Tillman and Njoku, the framework of a viable offense is in there and if Judkins can be a legit RB1, then the Browns will at least have to be taken seriously again.


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    June 4, 2025, 3:08 pm