'Composed' Gabriel impresses in Browns' loss

Cleveland Browns rookie backmost Dillon Gabriel threw 2 touchdowns and took attraction of the shot successful his archetypal vocation commencement Sunday, but it wasn't capable successful Cleveland's 21-17 nonaccomplishment to the Minnesota Vikings successful London.

Gabriel, the 94th wide prime successful this year's draft, completed 19 of 33 passes for 190 yards and 2 touchdowns. However, Cleveland's discourtesy stalled successful the 4th quarter, and Vikings backup backmost Carson Wentz drove Minnesota 80 yards for the game-winning score. Wentz connected with wide receiver Jordan Addison connected a the 12-yard touchdown with 25 seconds left.

"[Gabriel] looked similar helium usually does. Composed, making the plays that we cognize helium tin make," antiaircraft extremity Myles Garrett said. "He enactment america successful presumption to win. We've got to assistance ourselves out."

With the defeat, Browns quarterbacks are 0-17 successful their archetypal commencement since 1995, the longest specified streak since 1950 erstwhile QB starts were archetypal recorded, according to ESPN Research.

The Browns (1-4) led 10-7 astatine halftime, their archetypal clip starring aft 2 quarters since Week 12 of the 2024 play and held a 17-14 pb entering the 4th quarter. But Cleveland's discourtesy lone picked up 1 archetypal down successful the last 4th until its last possession. The Browns were 3 of 15 connected 3rd downs.

"We conscionable got to convert," Gabriel said. "You look back, there's evident times you've got to spell marque it happen. It starts with maine but america coming unneurotic collectively to spell marque that happen. But you look astatine a batch of the 3rd downs to widen drives, that's wherever we tin proceed to assistance ourselves."

Gabriel, 24, became the 41st Browns backmost to commencement a crippled since the franchise returned to the NFL successful 1999, the astir successful the league during that span. He besides became the archetypal backmost to marque his archetypal commencement successful an planetary game.

The Browns turned to Gabriel aft seasoned Joe Flacco turned the shot implicit an NFL-high 8 times successful the archetypal 4 games of the season. And portion Cleveland ran for a season-high 140 yards, Gabriel didn't crook the shot implicit and the squad won the turnover battle, 2-0, the backmost alteration wasn't capable to assistance an discourtesy that has present scored 17 oregon less points successful 10 consecutive games, dating backmost to past season, according to ESPN Research. That's tied for the longest streak successful franchise past and it's the longest streak by immoderate squad since the 2007 San Francisco 49ers.

"Probably premature to people and those types of things," Browns manager Kevin Stefanski said of Gabriel's archetypal start. "There were immoderate bully things, immoderate rookie things to surely cleanable up."