I wrote a while ago, following the NFL Draft, that I hoped the Browns’ top two football men would not let The Look bleed into what happens on the field when it comes to the team’s pecking order for its quarterbacks.

The verdict is not in — and it won’t be in for a long while because we’re only in late May and the start of training camp is still about two full months away — but the situation is off to a shaky and thus worrisome start.

When the Browns practiced on Wednesday — the NFL wants us to call these sessions OTAs, or organized team activities, but make absolutely no mistake about it that these are simply good, old-fashioned football practices, the likes of which have been going on in pro football for decades — rookie Shadeur Sanders was firmly ensconced as the fourth-stringer since he was the only one of the four quarterbacks who did not get any work in the 11-on-11 drills.

It’s not surprising, at least at the start of the start, which is where we’re at right now, that it happened this way. Joe Flacco, who went first, is in the Pro Football Hall of the Very Good already and might someday land in the Hall of Fame. Kenny Pickens, who was next, was a first-round NFL Draft choice in 2023 and spent his rookie season as a starter for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Third in line was rookie Dillon Gabriel, who was drafted in the third round, at No. 94 overall, two rounds and exactly 50 spots ahead of Sanders.

That makes sense for the Browns to begin with the impressions they had coming out of the draft.

However, my fear is that, because of The Look, Sanders is destined to remain at the bottom no matter what he does, and regardless of what the three people ahead of him do, or, as it were, don’t do.

The Look? “What is that?,” you say.

It is The Look that both Browns General Manager Andrew Berry and head coach Kevin Stefanski had on their faces when the ESPN TV cameras cut to the team’s draft room immediately after the selection of Sanders. It looked like the faces of people attending a wake. It was the first time that those in an NFL draft room were not celebrating and congratulating each other after making a pick. It was clear that they didn’t want Sanders. They were usurped and overruled by Browns owner Jimmy Haslam. He made the pick. And after he did, Berry and Stefanski sulked.

The sullen, holier-than-thou Berry has an ego and a self-righteousness the size of the Terminal Tower. That, and his passive-aggressive nature and the desire to prove that he was right, despite what the facts say, could easily cause him to dig his heels in and, in essence, order Stefanski to push Sanders down.

There’s no doubt in my mind at all that it could happen.

But will it?

We’ll see, but the start causes me pause.

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