Cleveland Browns: Would the team take a risk on this QB? Should they?

Texas Tech's Brendan Sorsby goes through a drill during spring football practice, Tuesday, April 14, 2026, at the Womble Football Center. | Nathan Giese/Avalanche-Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images Cleveland Browns head coach Todd Monken knew what he was getting into when he accepted the job as the seventh full-time head coach under the current ownership group. The biggest task facing Monken is a familiar one: finding a starting quarterback from a room of options, each more unappealing than the last.

As it stands right now, Monken will be choosing from veteran Deshaun Watson, who has made 19 unimpressive starts since 2020; Shedeur Sanders and Dillon Gabriel, both coming off rookie seasons that were the worst in the past 25 years; and Taylen Green, who was selected in the sixth round of this year’s draft. While everyone is eager (or perhaps fearful) of who will be the starting quarterback this fall, Monken is rightly in no hurry and reiterated this week that it is “my job to let it play out. ” It is almost a certainty that the Browns will open the season with three of those four players on the roster, but what if another option became available this summer in Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby?

Let’s run through the unique situation with Sorsby and see why this might or might not be a smart play by the Browns. Who is Brendan Sorsby? Brendan Sorsby is a fifth-year senior who spent two years at Indiana (2022 and 2023) before playing the past two seasons at Cincinnati.

While with the Bearcats, he threw for 5,613 yards, 60 touchdowns, and just 18 interceptions. Sorsby entered the transfer portal earlier this year as a popular target and ultimately landed at Texas Tech, with the plan to have one more solid season before heading off to the NFL. Things went off the rails earlier this week, however, when the school announced that Sorsby was taking an immediate and indefinite leave of absence from the program because he is entering a treatment program for a gambling addiction.