The Cleveland Browns have the No. 2 overall pick in the upcoming 2025 draft, but there appears to be little chance that they can improve much no matter how they use it. The Browns won only three games last season and lost controversial quarterback Deshaun Watson to an Achilles injury. The injury limited the two-time Heisman finalist to just seven games in 2024.
In January, the Browns learned that Watson had reinjured the Achilles tendon and required a second surgery to repair it. Cleveland now expects Watson to “miss significant time” in the upcoming, 2025 season as well.
That leaves Cleveland without a starting quarterback, because the depth in their quarterback room is not very deep. They got seven starts from 2015’s overall No. 1 NFL draft pick Jameis Winston, who signed with Cleveland as a free agent after four years with the New Orleans Saints and five with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the team that drafted him.
Winston Not the Answer to Watson Woes
But then Winston was benched due to inconsistent play — he tossed three interceptions in a game three times in his seven starts, the only NFL quarterback to earn the dubious distinction more than once — and the job went to Cleveland’s 2023 fifth-round pick Dorian Thompson-Robinson.
Robinson failed to distinguish himself in his pair of starts, Weeks 16 and 17, completing just 58.8 percent and 51.1 percent of his passes against the Cincinnati Bengals and Miami Dolphins, respectively.
By the season finale, the Browns had resorted to former New England Patriots backup quarterback Bailey Zappe, elevating the 25-year-old, 2022 fourth-rounder from their practice squad. That went about as well as the Thompson-Robinson experiment. With Winston now a free agent and not probable to be re-signed, and Watson out for an indefinite time, what do the Browns do at the quarterback spot?
‘Bazooka Joe’ Until Browns Draft Game-Changer
The obvious answer is — draft one. Cleveland’s second-overall pick could net them Miami quarterback Cam Ward or Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders. Or they could go a different route that according to a prediction by Sportsnaut football writer Andrew Buller-Russ, could land them a different, more promising Patriots backup quarterback — Joe Milton III.
Nicknamed “Bazooka Joe” for his powerful arm, Milton has thrown a football 80 yards in warm-up tosses and in his one start last season, in Week 18 against the Buffalo Bills, was clocked throwing a 62-mph pass, the second fastest recorded throw in NFL history. Except Milton threw it on the run and sidearm.
With neither Ward nor Sanders considered an obvious impact quarterback, the Browns might be better served by trading their highly valued pick down for multiple lower picks, allowing the team to rebuild its roster while it waits for the right QB to come along in the draft. In the meantime, Milton appears to represent a significant upgrade over Zappe or Thompson-Robinson.
Though he was the Patriots sixth-round pick, the 6’5″, 246 pound Milton’s physical talents make his upside high, even as he has a lot to learn about the NFL quarterback position. Nonetheless, at Tennessee, Milton was the MVP of the 2023 Orange Bowl when on the force of what observers called his “rocket arm,” and “the strongest arm on Earth,” he led the Volunteers to a 31-14 drubbing of Clemson.
Because Milton was a sixth-round pick himself, the Browns could likely bring him on board without giving up significant draft assets as they put together their rebuild.
