Todd Monken: We'll have a QB competition, but reps won't be split evenly
The Browns will open their offseason program next week and one of the things to watch in the coming weeks will be how things are shaping up at quarterback. Shedeur Sanders and Dillon Gabriel are back for their second seasons with the club and Deshaun Watson is expected to be on the field after missing all of last season, but no one is being anointed as the starter at this point in the calendar. Head coach Todd Monken shed some light on how he will work toward making that decision when he spoke to reporters on Tuesday and one of the key takeaways was that everyone won't be getting the same amount of work every day.
"I think there’s always competition irrespective of the number of reps a player gets," Monken said, via the team's website. "The number of reps a player gets doesn't eliminate competition. It's just in a given day, let's say for instance, you want to see a quarterback with the first group, the second group, the third group.
Well, are you going to divide those reps up evenly? Are you going to divide up the reps everywhere evenly? I don't see it that way.
That doesn't mean there's not competition. I just see it as in a given day, and it'll be daily in terms of who gets what reps and when, because we certainly want to allocate our reps to the players we feel like are going to give us the best chance to win. " That approach means they'll be a lot of attention paid to snaps during offseason practices that are open to the media.
There won't be as many of those as there will be this summer and Monken sounds like he'd like to be closing in on a decision by the time camp opens. "That doesn't mean there's still not competition," Monken said. "But I do think you have to narrow the reps or at least balance up the reps of who you anticipate has to come out of the spring, certainly in a position to be a starter.