Browns 53-man roster for Week 1 at Jacksonville, position by position: Mary Kay Cabot

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Browns will open the season Sunday at Jacksonville with 53 players, five of them rookie starters, and a defensive line that will dress four edge rushers.

The roster has turned over three times since the initial cut on Aug. 26. Denzel Ward was traded to Pittsburgh on Aug. 27 for a first-round pick in each of the next two drafts. Jerry Jeudy was traded to the Giants on Sept. 1 for a third-round pick in 2027. DeAndre Hopkins signed on Sept. 3 and is listed as a starter.

Here is the roster as it stands, by position, with the cap.

Offense (26)

Sanders was named the starter Wednesday. He threw seven touchdowns and 10 interceptions over seven starts as a rookie and finished with an 18.9 QBR, fifth-worst among 696 qualifying seasons since the statistic was introduced.

Gabriel is the backup. Green, a sixth-round pick out of Arkansas, is the third quarterback and will dress.

Concepcion, the 10th overall pick, and Boston, the 39th, both start. Hopkins, 34, has 1,059 career catches and starts on the outside.

The offensive line has three players in new jobs. Brailsford, a fifth-round pick out of Alabama, is the starting center. Iheanachor, the ninth overall pick, is the starting right tackle. Elgton Jenkins, a two-time Pro Bowl center in Green Bay, has started at right guard since early in camp.

Defense (24)

Collins has not been cleared for team work since July. He did individual drills Wednesday and Thursday. Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah is on reserve/PUP with a neck injury and will not play this season.

Schwesinger wears the green dot and calls the defense on the field. He is 23 and in his second season.

McNeil-Warren, a second-round pick out of Toledo, is the fifth rookie starter.

Specialists (3)

K Andre Szmyt, P Corey Bojorquez, LS Rex Sunahara. The Browns carried three punters into camp and released two of them, Nik Constantinou on Aug. 26 and Wes Pahl on Aug. 24.

The depth chart behind the starters

Judkins is the starter at running back with Sampson second and Abanikanda third. Abanikanda, signed Aug. 30, is up for special teams.

Bond, Tillman and Larvadain are the fourth, fifth and sixth receivers. Tillman is in the last year of his rookie contract.

Behind the line: Dawand Jones backs up Howard at left tackle, Zinter backs up Zion Johnson at left guard, Wypler backs up Brailsford at center, Teven Jenkins backs up Elgton Jenkins at right guard and Barber backs up Iheanachor at right tackle.

On defense, Wright and Okwara rotate behind Verse and McGuire. Hall, Chatman and Kamara rotate inside behind Graham. Justin Jefferson, the fifth-round pick out of Alabama, is the third linebacker with Ulofoshio and Mascarenas-Arnold behind him.

Harden and Tyler Hall are the reserve outside corners. Mathis backs up Delpit in the slot. Bryant is the third safety.

The two position switches

Delpit, a safety for six seasons and a captain, will start in the slot. He is 6-3 and 213 pounds and has played 1,847 snaps within eight yards of the ball since 2022, according to figures the Browns provided Thursday.

Savage, signed Aug. 31, is the starting boundary corner. He has played 5,241 defensive snaps in seven seasons and 4,918 of them came at safety.

Defensive backs coach Brandon Lynch began working Savage at corner in mid-July, six weeks before the Ward trade.

The cap

Ward’s $9.7 million base salary went to Pittsburgh. His $6 million of bonus proration stayed on the 2026 books and the four years behind it, $24 million, accelerated to 2027 because the trade came after June 1.

Jeudy’s trade left $4.2 million on this year’s cap and $8.4 million on next year’s.

Together the two trades cleared $18.4 million of 2026 room. The Browns spent $9.1 million of it on Hopkins, Savage, Abanikanda and Burton, and are carrying $11.4 million into the opener.

Hopkins signed for one year and $5.25 million, with $3.5 million guaranteed and $1.5 million available in playing-time incentives that do not count against this year’s cap. His 2026 cap number is $3.8 million.

Savage signed for one year and $4.75 million. Abanikanda signed for the minimum. Burton signed for one year and $1.4 million.

Cleveland has the second-largest 2026 dead-money total in the NFL. Miami’s $182.29 million leads it.

Who did not make it

Released or waived at the cut, by position group: WRs Malachi Corley, Tylan Wallace, Luke Floriea and Kole Wilson; TEs Jack Stoll, Brenden Bates, Blake Whiteheart and Dae’Quan Wright; RBs Raheim Sanders, Davon Booth and Ahmani Marshall.

Offensive line: Tyre Phillips, Jeremiah Byers, Jack Conley, Kingsley Eguakun, Izavion Miller and KT Leveston.

Defensive line: Benton Whitley, Kalia Davis, Travis Bell, Coziah Izzard, Patrick Jenkins, Adin Huntington, Tyreak Sapp and Khordae Sydnor.

Linebackers Winston Reid and Nathaniel Watson. Defensive backs Daniel Thomas, Tre Avery, Michael Coats Jr., Nate Evans, Jeadyn Lukus, Jeremiah McClendon, Donovan McMillon, Christopher Edmonds, Tyron Herring and Zion Washington.

Corley, a third-year receiver acquired last season, was the most established of the cuts. Wallace has 47 career catches over six seasons and was the only player released who had been to a Super Bowl.

Stoll, 28, had been the No. 2 tight end for most of camp and lost the job to Royer, a fifth-round rookie, in the last ten days of it.

Thirteen of the cuts cleared waivers and returned on the practice squad, including Leveston, Kendrick Green, Eguakun, Corley, Floriea, Whiteheart, Booth, Bell, Sydnor, Sapp, Lukus, McMillon and Evans.

Here are my thoughts on what the Browns should do, and what they might do:

They need a fifth edge rusher and they know it

Can a defense that moved Myles Garrett in June get to Trevor Lawrence with four?

Four is not enough for a 1 p.m. kickoff in Jacksonville in September, and it will be fewer than four by October. Verse played 68% of the snaps as a rookie in Los Angeles on a deeper line than this one.

I would put a claim in on any edge who comes free in the next three weeks and I think they will. There are five clubs carrying six.

Ten offensive linemen is the right number here

They kept ten and I would have kept eleven. The starting five includes two rookies, one of them at center, and a guard who spent seven seasons at center. Dawand Jones has missed 21 games in three years.

Barber, the third-round pick out of Florida, is the swing tackle at 23. That is a lot to ask in Week 1.

Three quarterbacks is a luxury and they should keep it

Nobody carries three anymore, and the Browns have spent this decade finding out why they should. Green ran the Trevor Lawrence look for the defense on Monday and Nick Mansour said the defense did not enjoy it.

The Delpit move is the one I would bet on

He would also be my pick to lead this team in tackles. He has played that job in everything but name for three seasons and the Browns are the last team in the league to write it on a depth chart.

Savage on the boundary is the one I have questions about, and Mike Rutenberg answered them Thursday better than I expected. Whether it holds against Brian Thomas Jr. for 60 minutes is a different question, and Sunday answers it.

I would have kept a seventh receiver over a seventh corner

They kept seven corners and six receivers, and the seventh corner is Mathis, who has not played a defensive snap since 2024. The seventh receiver would have been Corley, who is 24 and on the practice squad and can be elevated three times.

I think they elevate him in the first month. He is the only receiver in the organization who has taken a jet sweep in a regular-season game.

$32.4 million on 2027 is a real bill

It is also a bill this front office chose to pay in exchange for picks in the same two drafts, and it will be argued about here for two years. The Browns have three first-round picks in April and they have 11 selections.

Mansour has not said what he intends to do with the Rams’ pick next April. Everyone in the league assumes it is a quarterback and he has not disputed it, which is not the same as confirming it.