BEREA, Ohio -- Rookie Shedeur Sanders will start at quarterback in Sunday's home game against the San Francisco 49ers, Cleveland Browns coach Kevin Stefanski announced Monday.
Sanders, a fifth-round pick, will remain the starter even though fellow rookie Dillon Gabriel, a third-round pick, has cleared the concussion protocol, Stefanski said.
With Gabriel sidelined, Sanders completed 11 of 20 passes for 209 yards with one touchdown and an interception in the Browns' 24-10 victory over the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday in his first NFL start.
"The number one job of a quarterback is to win," Stefanski said. "So, excited to get that first win under his belt. And the next thing is improvement, and that's what young players do. Certainly, young quarterbacks do. You get one game better, and that's just from working at it. So, that'll be our focus."
When asked if Sanders starting would be a week-to-week decision, Stefanski said: "I'm just going to focus on this week. Not going to get much past this week."
Sanders, who became the 42nd quarterback to start for the Browns since 1999, also became the first Cleveland quarterback to win his first NFL start since Eric Zeier in 1995. The victory ended a 17-game losing streak for the Browns in games with a quarterback making his first career start. That was the longest streak by any franchise since 1950, when QB starts were first recorded.
"First start for any quarterback, you're always going to make sure that the operation is how you want it, and I thought by and large was good," Stefanski said. "There's things that we can clean up and obviously that goes on all of us. That's coaches, that's the players, the quarterback, where we can clean up some of our operation. But I thought communication was really good throughout the day with him.
"The big plays downfield," Stefanski added. "Obviously the [52-yard completion] to [rookie wide receiver Isaiah Bond] was very, very high degree of difficulty with that play. Are there things that he can do better? Absolutely. We've already talked about that with him. He has the mentality that he will make the adjustments to the speed of the game, make the adjustments to what people are giving us to make those improvements."
Gabriel started the previous five games before suffering a concussion against the Baltimore Ravens in Week 11, which sidelined him for the second half of the 23-16 loss and Sunday's game against the Raiders. In eight games (six starts), Gabriel has completed 59.2% of his passes (109-of-184) for 937 yards, seven touchdowns and two interceptions. The Browns went 1-4 in games Gabriel started before his injury in Week 11.