Hunter Tierney Jul 31, 2025 6 min read

Haslam’s QB Comments Were Calculated — And Very Telling

Jun 12, 2025; Berea, OH, USA; Cleveland Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski, left, and managing and principal partner Dee Haslam, middle, and managing and principal partner Jimmy Haslam watch practice during mini camp at CrossCountry Mortgage Campus.
Credit: Ken Blaze-Imagn Images

Training camp pressers for owners tend to be pretty paint-by-numbers — they thank the fans, wave to the cameras, toss a few harmless compliments around, and head back to the suite. That’s not what happened for Cleveland.

Jimmy Haslam stepped in front of the mic and delivered a set of quarterback-related comments that felt unusually honest, oddly timed, and very much designed for maximum impact. Not dramatic, not inflammatory—just precise, calculated, and more revealing in tone than content.

And while he didn’t go off-script in a tabloid kind of way, the way he addressed two particular quarterbacks—rookie Shedeur Sanders and college star Arch Manning—was impossible to ignore.

It wasn’t just what he said. It was how carefully he said it. And that alone is worth a closer look.

Not My Pick: The Shedeur Shuffle

Nov 29, 2024; Boulder, Colorado, USA; Colorado Buffaloes quarterback Shedeur Sanders (2) before the game against the Oklahoma State Cowboys at Folsom Field.
Credit: Ron Chenoy-Imagn Images

The Browns made headlines when they took Shedeur Sanders at No. 144 overall — an already buzzy pick made even buzzier by the fact that they had just taken Dillon Gabriel earlier in the draft. Two quarterbacks? On a roster that already had a few? That’s the kind of move that practically begs for a media cycle.

And it didn’t take long for the questions to start flying: Was this a football move? A front office curveball? Or was someone upstairs pulling the strings?

When Jimmy Haslam stepped up to the podium as training camp opened up, we got our answer. He delivered what felt like an emphatic point of clarification:

We had a conversation early that morning, and we had a conversation later that day, and we had the right people involved in that conversation. At the end of the day, that's Andrew Berry's call. Andrew made the call to pick Shedeur. Just like who's gonna start or what play we're gonna call is Kevin's call. But that's Andrew's call. He made the call.

Haslam even went as far as to say that if someone had told him the night before the pick that Sanders was going to be a Brown, he would’ve flat out said, “That’s not happening.”

Now, if you’re a Browns fan, you’re probably having some mix of these two reactions:

  1. “That’s how it should work.” GMs are paid to make football decisions. Owners can offer input, but they shouldn’t be calling the shots on Day 3 quarterback flyers.

  2. “Okay, but why say it like that?” The insistence, the repetition — it almost drew more attention to the narrative it was trying to snuff out.

To be clear: there’s no hard proof that Haslam forced the Sanders pick. But in the NFL, you don’t always need proof for perception to take root. Owners have histories. Teams have reputations. And in Cleveland, quarterback decisions carry more baggage than the team plane.

So when Haslam said what he said, it was less about explaining the pick and more about making sure everyone knew exactly who to look at if things go sideways. And who not to.

A Flash of Disinterest for Manning

Oct 26, 2024; Nashville, Tennessee, USA; Texas Longhorns quarterback Arch Manning (16) walks off the field against the Vanderbilt Commodores during post game at FirstBank Stadium.
Credit: Steve Roberts-Imagn Images

When Jimmy Haslam was later asked about Arch Manning, you could practically feel the air go out of the room. No buildup, no overexplaining — just a firm, matter-of-fact brush-off. He said he knows the Manning family in general, but not Arch personally, and if he had to guess, Arch would probably stay in school another couple of years. Then came the line that really stuck:

I don't even really think that's worth discussing.

It wasn’t aggressive. But there was a shrug buried in his tone that made it clear he wasn’t interested in playing the 'what if' game. That might’ve been the biggest tell of all. Because even if he didn’t mean it as a slight, it came off less like someone dismissing media noise and more like someone who just didn’t see Arch Manning as a conversation worth having — not for now, maybe not ever.

And in fairness, the speculation had already taken on a life of its own. The Browns have two first-round picks next year, which puts them in rare position to make a big splash if they wanted to. Manning, meanwhile, is stepping into his first season as the full-time guy at Texas — and he’s carrying a last name that does most of the marketing for him. That alone was enough to get the rumor mill turning.

But Haslam didn’t feed it. He shut it down before it could even get rolling. And in July, that’s probably the smartest thing he could’ve done. The NFL already gives teams enough distractions without adding a hypothetical quarterback pursuit into the mix — especially when the QB room is already crowded and under a microscope.

Still, there was something interesting about the way he said it. Not just that the Browns weren’t interested — but that he personally didn’t think the topic was even worth his time. In a league where owners love to play the long game and drop breadcrumbs about future moves, Haslam’s silence might’ve been the loudest quote of the day.

Reading Between the Lines

Jan 14, 2020; Cleveland, Ohio, USA; Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam talks with the media after a press conference to introduce head coach Kevin Stefanski at FirstEnergy Stadium.
Credit: Ken Blaze-Imagn Images

Let’s call this presser what it really was: narrative control.

On Shedeur, he didn’t leave a lot of room for interpretation. The message was loud and clear: “That was Berry’s pick.”Haslam wasn’t defensive about it, but he was deliberate — emphasizing who made the decision and why. He tossed a quick nod to Sanders’ work ethic, made it clear that the rookie was doing everything right so far, and pivoted back to the front office.

It was the kind of statement designed to cool the narrative that ownership was meddling from above. If you squinted, it even felt like a bit of early blame deflection — just in case things go south down the line.

On Arch, the tone changed. This wasn’t so much about avoiding pressure as it was about keeping a sideshow from becoming a main event. The moment he said “not worth discussing,” the Browns’ potential pursuit of Arch Manning went from hot topic to cold storage.

You might not love how blunt it sounded. You might think the whole thing felt overly calculated. But when you take a step back, the strategy starts to make sense. Haslam wasn’t trying to rewrite the headlines — he was trying to control when and how they’re written.

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