The New York Giants leapfrogged the Los Angeles Rams in the 2025 NFL Draft on April 24 to make Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart the 25th overall pick.
Later, the Cleveland Browns grabbed Oregon signal-caller Dillon Gabriel at pick No. 94 before the Browns generated headlines by trading up to select Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders with overall choice No. 144.
For a Wednesday mailbag, NFL insider Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated revealed that the Browns nearly drastically altered the draft by making a move for Dart shortly after Cleveland took Michigan defensive tackle Mason Graham with the fifth pick.
“Cleveland did try to get back in the first round [on April 24],” Breer wrote. “I’d heard it was for [Oregon offensive tackle Josh Conerly Jr]. But it’s possible — and I’m not as sure on this, one way or another — that they’d have done the same for Dart before the Giants made the move up to 25 to land him.”
The Browns first traded the draft’s second overall pick along with fourth-round (No. 104) and sixth-round choices (No. 200) to the Jacksonville Jaguars for the No. 5 overall pick, a second-round selection (No. 36), a fourth-round choice (No. 126) and a 2026 first-round pick. To compare, the Giants sent
2025 picks No. 34 and No. 99 along with a 2026 third-round selection to the Houston Texans for what became the Dart pick.
Browns insider Tony Grossi of ESPN Cleveland/The Land on Demand previously shared that the Browns had Gabriel ranked behind Miami’s Cam Ward, Dart and Louisville’s Tyler Shough. Considering the Tennessee Titans took Ward with pick No. 1, logic suggests Cleveland would’ve targeted Dart had the club traded back into the first round with a quarterback in mind.
The Browns could’ve developed Dart as a QB3 behind one-time Super Bowl champion Joe Flacco and 2022 first-round selection Kenny Pickett through most or even all of the upcoming season. While one will never know for sure, it seems unlikely that Cleveland would have acquired a big-name backup, such as Sanders, later in the draft if it had unofficially declared that it viewed Dart as its quarterback of the future.
NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport (h/t NJ Advance Media for NJ.com) said on a recent edition of “The Insiders” program that trading up for Sanders would have been a “possibility” for the Giants had Dart not been available. That’s interesting since reports have indicated at least one of Sanders’ predraft visits with Giants head coach Brian Daboll went rather poorly.
In short, it sounds like April could’ve ended with the Browns having Dart and the Giants having Sanders. Depending on what those quarterbacks are roughly 10 years down the road, the developments of the 2025 draft could spark one of the most interesting NFL-related “what if” questions of the ongoing decade.
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