DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum Browns 2025 Schedule

Looking at the schedule, I expect the Browns to let Pickett start the season against a tough opening slate of games and to see if Pickett has anything worth salvaging/further time developing. From there, I suspect one of, if not both, rookies to get an opportunity so the Browns can evaluate if it is necessary to draft a QB in round 1 in 2026.

Joe Flacco is the break glass in case of emergency vet if the others look so bad in camp they are unplayable.

Here is the Jags schedule which is worth noting since the Browns own their first round pick.....

It does. It may not be prime time in a traditional sense, but it is an exclusive game. Either way, I don't care about those. We have a lot of 1PM kickoffs....I like that.

5 of our first 6 games are against playoff teams. We'll be out of playoff contention by the end of September.

13 1 PM kickoffs Doing my former old fat white guy with no rhythm dance, now called the skinny, no ass, stick figure shake.

I'm hoping for 10-12 wins but realistically 4-6 wins tops is my prediction.

we will start out like 2-8 and finish like 4-13

j/c:

I'm completely fine with having zero primetime games and all but three games slated for 1PM. I prefer Sunday 1PM games over any other day/time.

Me too Memphis.

I do usually like 1-2 primetime games, especially if they're at home (I like SNF and MNF) ... but I actually prefer the 4:25 kickoff the most. We rarely get them tho

The only reason I like primetime games is because I live out of market and I refuse to buy the game day season ticket whatever it’s called. But I’m neither surprised nor upset that there aren’t any.

Since 2018 we’ve split the division 3–3 every season except two, and one of those was 3-2-1. I expect that to continue. So running it down, I predict:

5–12 to 8–9.

We’ll be more competitive if for no other reason than we don’t have the turd under center for more than half the season, but we just don’t have enough solidity in key positions to really vye this year. If Joe ends up the quarterback, we’ll have a slew of 2–3INT losses and we’ll see picket or the others sooner than later. My only (perhaps irrational) hope is that Gabriel turns out to be the real deal early.

If we’re hovering near the bottom of the league with 5 to 6 games left and we haven’t seen much of Gabriel or Sanders at that point I suspect we will then. Either one of them balls out or they definitively don’t. In either scenario we will have clarified the draft strategy for next year. My biggest complaint about this quarterback room and this year’s draft in general is that it really muddies what exactly the plan is for next year’s draft. Are we really gonna be able to get a good enough look at all the quarterbacks not named Joe to get a sense if there’s a real future there or not?

We have to see how the season goes and how our young QB’s play but if there’s any doubt at all about their ability then we should draft a QB high next year. We have a golden opportunity next year that we may not have again for a long time.

I don't think "we" need to get a huge look at the rookie QB's. They do. As you said, if things have gone south for the bulk of the season I feel pretty sure "we" will get a look at them in the end. But this coaching staff will get a look at them all season.

You didn’t tell me you were 87 years old! 😏😀

I love the primetime games and 4pm games. The games have a bigger feel to them.

A full slate of 1pm are for the irrelevant franchises.

Only 2 games past 1pm start, I like it. Only west coast game is at the Raiders. London game sucks but rest i can deal with.

I get that. But taking 2 QBs with 2 of your 7 total picks means you're at least trying to solve the problem this year. Which means you better feel confident about your ability to effectively evaluate them in a single year. I agree that next year is primed for a top QB pick and I predicted (hoped) they'd trade back for that very reason. When they did so, it confirmed it for me. Taking a QB later didn't necessarily tank that strategy, you want a young backup to work with your new stud and Gabriel, on paper anyway, is about the perfect backup profile. But using two picks kinda speaks to a different goal and a different assessment protocol for the year, even if they are late picks. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong.

I understand that no primetime games is a black mark, but I'm another one that prefers 1pm games.

If they had selected a QB earlier in the draft process I would agree with you. I think at the point in the draft where both were selected indicates that they felt confident they could find a solid backup QB while at the same time taking a long shot flyer they might stumble onto a franchise QB in the process. But hey, who knows. Your guess is as good as mine.

But there's one thing for sure nobody, okay well maybe not nobody , but the vast majority of people would agree with. If they find a franchise QB in next years draft and one of these two pans out as well, you have an asset much more valuable than the draft invetsment you made on them.

It's all about salary! If Sanders and/or Gabriel become a top 15 ranked quarterback, you have one, maybe two, average quarterbacks for the next few years for under a million each per year.

Now, they are not forced to take a quarterback in the next two drafts.

As Pitt pointed out and if you do draft a potentially better quarterback in the next two years, you have high draft capital in both Sanders and Gabriel.

Browns want Sanders and Gabriel to become average. Pickett is good in the preseason for possible trade bait.

Having PIckett playing well and the two rookies struggling is not ideal. Pickett will want to get paid next year.

I believe a lot is riding on these two rookie quarterbacks.

It’s a brutal playing schedule and anything better than one win after W5 can’t realistically be expected.
With a bit of luck maybe 3W when bye week comes and hopefully we can double that figure when the season ends.

Going by experience from other demanding sports it’s highly likely that Flacco who earlier this year passed 40 will decline physically and lose some of his previous sharpness.
Going by stats from the last couple of seasons has his decline already begun and it would be unrealistic to believe that he will perform similar to what we saw in 2023.
I want to believe in miracles but the odds aren’t in his favor.

I simply can’t see him survive more than 5-6 weeks especially if we start in a similar way we ended the last season.

Yes, it's an NFL schedule.

Predicting wins and losses before teams are even down to 53 is an even more suspect guessing exercise than usual.

I agree. I really don't like late kicks.

I agree. We will see them playing early in the season. If one takes off, great. I will be thrilled if one or both of the QB's give us enough tape where we don't have to draft a QB in next years draft.

as important as anything is the Jags schedule - we need them to LOSE

I understand how the league scheduling system works but for a team that only won 3 games we have a tough schedule. Jacksonville is much easier than ours.

We'll see.

It will be interesting to see how their season goes. I think the inexperience on that coaching staff could show up.

Maybe they'll end up being great, but some major growing pains would not surprise me at all.

Nah!

We’re ranked between 28-32 by bookies, respectable media and many others with inside knowledge. Anything better than 7W must actually be labeled as a small success.

Not saying the Browns are going to make a similar jump but I am sure the Texans 2 years ago and the Commanders last year were not predicted to have the success they had. Every year 1 or 3 teams surprise and 1 or 2 teams disappoint. Last summer many experts expected the Browns to have a good year. That clearly did not happen. In 2023 there was no expectation the team would finish 2nd in the AFC North and make the playoffs but they did. Bottom line is yes alot of what if's would have to take place for the Browns to have a level of success. Flacco or another QB would have to have a decent season, the run game would have to have a strong year, and the defense return to being top 5 to 10 in the league. But anything is possible maybe to probable. The experts just look at the past to predict the future many times they are right but in some cases every season in the NFL they are wrong.

We're "ranked" there in May. No one has seen this year's team actually even practice as a full squad doing 11 on 11. We don't know who the QB will be or how they will look here this year. We don't know how players have/will progress/regress. We don't know what we're doing schematically on offense.

"Inside knowledge" is frequently reckless speculation. Respectable media isn't quite an oxymoron, but measured takes are less incentivized than sensationalized ones.

And Shedeur Sanders was predicted to be a first round draft pick by many as well.