The Cleveland Browns will stick with Dillon Gabriel as their starter this week against the Baltimore Ravens, but skepticism is mounting about his long-term viability as an NFL quarterback after a 1-4 opening stretch to his career.
Gabriel took over for Joe Flacco in Week 5. He’s done little to show that he can produce at the NFL level. Gabriel has rarely looked downfield, and when he has, his passes have lacked the needed accuracy and zip to be effective. His 5.0 yards per attempt is the lowest in the NFL. In all, Gabriel has passed for 869 yards, five touchdowns and two interceptions in five starts.
Zac Jackson of The Athletic believes that Gabriel is “overmatched” in the NFL and has little faith he can even be a viable developmental option for the Browns.
“He’s not a developmental quarterback. He’s a quarterback who has hit a wall. You have a picture painted of who Dillon Gabriel is. He has done nothing but go backwards since that first game,” Jackson said on Thursday on The Ultimate Cleveland Sports Show. “He’s overmatched — the numbers say that, the eye test says it. The reality is, he always was when they rushed him out there. They haven’t done him any favors. They aren’t doing him any favors with this wide receiver corps. But it’s very clear — he is not going to be an NFL quarterback. And that has been the case since the spring.”
The Browns spent a third-round pick on Gabriel with hopes he could finally solve their long-standing quarterback problem. But drafting Shedeur Sanders two rounds later did him no favors, adding another layer of pressure for the rookie.
With Gabriel struggling, calls have grown for Sanders to get his shot under center. But head coach Kevin Stefanski has avoided the topic, declining to answer questions about when Sanders could see the field.
“I don’t think it’s fair to speculate. We’re committed to getting better as an offense,” Stefanski said. “Dillon is certainly committing to improving every which way he can. And all the while, all of our players, young players, are developing and working so hard behind the scenes to make sure that they’re getting better on a daily basis.”
There are problems with the Browns’ offense beyond Gabriel. But the rookie will only have so many more shots with the team racking up losses.
As Jackson noted, Gabriel hasn’t shown meaningful growth through five starts. Still, the Browns’ rookie quarterback insisted he’s focused on steady development rather than overnight results.
“I don’t think growth is ever linear, and there’s regression and there’s progression,” Gabriel said on Thursday. “So there’s things that get better and things we’ve got to continue to work on, but I want to continue to get better. And that’s what you strive for every single day.”
Gabriel’s next test will come against the Ravens on Sunday, who are playing solid football after a rough start to the year. Baltimore pounded the Browns 41-17 in Week 2.
“They’re talented at all levels, play really good as a unit, communicate really effectively,” Gabriel said. “We have our hands full.”
Cleveland is a 12.5-point underdog for the matchup, per ESPN BET.
The Pittsburgh Penguins have had many a pleasant surprise over their first 17 games. They’ve gotten a lot of life out of mid-level free agent signings like Justin Brazeau, Anthony Mantha and Parker Wotherspoon. Arturs Silovs has looked the part of an NHL goalie. Tristan Jarry and even Ryan Graves have started upon redemption journeys, no matter how modest or long-lasting they might be. Evgeni Malkin has seemingly turned back the hands of time. Erik Karlsson is playing like he has something to prove. Sidney Crosby is, well, you can’t be too surprised that he’s still the best player on the ice most nights but at 38 it’s still something to see.
The progression of Ben Kindel, however, is arguably their finest and most pleasant surprise of all so far. No one had him even close to the NHL radar in 2025-26 (though, hey, at least we were able to raise the possibility of the unexpected)
Those seven other forwards who fit in the category are Zach Benson, Cole Sillinger, Ryan O’Reilly, Patrice Bergeron, Dustin Brown, Justin Williams and Sykora. Of those, only the first two have had their rookie seasons in the last 15 years.
Not only is Kindel making it, he’s excelling. It’s early, small sample, blah blah but Kindel has stepped right in and looked the part of a player who can drive his own line and now has stepped up to the first line to play on the wing. Kindel’s two-way play was touted coming out of the WHL just as much as his ability to produce points and that has been the case thus far in his first 15 NHL games.
Of the others, here are some stat lines for their rookie years:
These players, of course, were far from finished products even though it is rare to even show enough to stick in the NHL from this age without being a top-10 draft pick. One commonality amongst these players seems to be a defensive conscious, Beregron won six Selke trophies in his career, O’Reilly has won the award once. Brown and Sykora picked up Selke votes in their careers and were known as reliable players off the puck, as was Williams. It wouldn’t be a surprise if Kindel joins them to at least find his name on Selke ballots in the future if he eventually grows into a penalty killing center as his career blossoms. That makes sense on the surface level, if a young player is going to make it right off the bat they have to instantly create some trust away from the puck and demonstrate a good compete and detail level to their game beyond their young age.
As the stats above show, there’s a lot more offensive upside for the players to find. Most of the rookies ended up in the 25-30ish point range as draft+1 NHLers and almost all of them eventually found their game grow into being 60+ players (including Benson, who got to 60 in his second season). That hasn’t always been the case — Sillinger has no more than 33 points over his four NHL seasons and may never reach the levels that just about everyone else did but the track record there is fairly strong and shows a clear path about a promising future is ahead for young Kindel.
Of course, one doesn’t need this article to realize all of that, the eye test is showing in spades the impressiveness in Kindel’s game. It was only a month ago when the Pens’ coaches had a plan to cycle Kindel out as a healthy scratch at times to keep him from getting overloaded. Plans can change, Kindel has played the last eight games in a row and more all the time (scoring five points and averaging 16:30 per game while playing more minutes each game in the last four games than he played in all of his first 11). The scratches have gone away because there hasn’t been a need lately to give him time off.
Kindel has been able to handle what the Pens have asked, whether that’s been centering his own line or now moving up to play wing with Crosby. For someone drafted outside of the top-10 and won’t turn 19 until after the regular season ends that could be the biggest and best surprise of them all this season in Pittsburgh.