It’s one thing to be criticized. It’s another to be mocked. For Cleveland Browns quarterback Dillon Gabriel, a humiliating hot mic moment captured the sickening truth of his current predicament. After another dismal offensive performance, a reporter, allegedly Chris Easterling of the Akron Beacon Journal, was caught on a live feed turning to his colleagues. He wasn’t torching the quarterback’s stats. He was mocking his stature. “I’m taller than him,” he was seen mouthing, a moment of frat-boy bullying that exposed a crack in the dam.

That dam—a carefully constructed narrative built by the Browns’ front office and dutifully upheld by local media—is now bursting. The “Dillon Gabriel agenda”, the anointing of the undersized “supercomputer” as the franchise’s future, has crumbled. What we are witnessing is not just a losing season; it’s a full-scale media meltdown, a civil war fueled by leaked audio, on-air reckonings, and allegations of a sinister conspiracy to protect the organization’s ego at all costs.

If the hot mic was the appetizer, the main course was served by 92.3 The Fan’s Daryl Ruiter, who finally unleashed the truth that frustrated fans have been screaming for weeks. This wasn’t a hot take; it was an execution. “I’m so frustrated that Andrew Barry did this,” Ruiter bellowed, his voice dripping with the exasperation of a city betrayed. “I told you in training camp this guy wasn’t it! This is unwatchable!”.

“Unwatchable”. Not “developing.” Not “struggling.” Unwatchable.

The stats back him up. The Browns are a miserable 2-6. The season is a funeral. And Gabriel, the man given all the first-team reps, is averaging a pathetic 5.1 yards per pass attempt. That’s not just bad; it’s 38th in the NFL, worse than backups and players who have since been cut. The “supercomputer” is getting a “404 error” every time he drops back. He’s playing scared, checking down on third-and-long, and, as the hot-mic reporter so cruelly noted, he seemingly can’t see over his own offensive line.

This catastrophic failure begs a dark, polluted question that hangs over the entire city: If Gabriel is this bad, why is he still the starter? Why is the other rookie, Shedeur Sanders, buried on the bench? Why is he, as Coach Kevin Stefanski just admitted, not even getting first-team reps in practice?

The answer, according to a growing chorus of evidence, is the real story. For months, there has allegedly been a coordinated, planned attack on Shedeur Sanders’s character and performance, orchestrated by the very people now scrambling to save their jobs. The goal: to justify anointing their hand-picked, controllable, and now-failing project.

Want proof? Let’s talk about the speeding tickets. Back in the offseason, Sanders was ticketed twice for speeding. The Cleveland media machine exploded. It was the lead story on every sports talk show. The narrative was immediate and vicious: “Is this guy serious?” “Is this Deion’s kid just another entitled, spoiled brat?”. It was, by all accounts, a full-blown character assassination, designed to paint him as reckless and “not the Cleveland way”.

Just weeks later, who else got a speeding ticket? Oh, just the face of the franchise. The generational talent. Miles Garrett. And he wasn’t just creeping over the limit; he was clocked at 100 MPH in a 60 MPH zone—just as fast, if not faster, than Sanders. The media response? Crickets. It was a footnote. “That’s just Miles.” “A good learning experience”. Sanders’s ticket was a scandal; Garrett’s was an “oopsie”. It was, as the source alleges, a “blatant, undeniable, disgusting double standard”.

Why the hit job? The theory is simple: Sanders is not controllable. He is “Deion’s son.” He doesn’t play their game. While the establishment tried to frame him as an out-of-touch celebrity kid, Sanders was “pulling up unannounced at local Cleveland high schools”, surprising football teams, inspiring kids, and being a “man of the people”. This genuine, un-managed connection to the community is the one thing the old-guard media can’t stand. They can’t own him.

The final smoking gun, the moment the agenda was allegedly locked in, was Sanders’s confrontation with media “king” Tony Grossi. After a preseason game, Sanders didn’t just walk by. He walked right up to Grossi, with his brother filming, and looked him in the eye. “Tony,” he said, “I be hoping you got something positive to say about me. You only say negative stuff about me. And I’m like, ‘I ain’t do nothing to you’”.

He didn’t kiss the ring. He confronted the king. He called him out. From that moment, the narrative was set. This kid was too confident, too smart, too powerful. They had to find a guy they could control, and they found him: a “supercomputer” too small to see the field and too scared to throw past the line of scrimmage.

This internal rot is now killing the team. The locker room is collapsing. Miles Garrett, perhaps the best defensive player on the planet, is watching his prime get set on fire by a historically inept offense. After a recent loss where Garrett had a historic five sacks and the team still lost by 19 points, he was seen on the sideline, helmet off, seething—a man at his breaking point.

And here is the final, sickening hypocrisy. How did the Cleveland media frame Garrett’s public, angry tantrum? Mary Kay Cabot praised it. She said his teammates “saw a player who cared”. She said Garrett was “stepping up and meeting the challenge of being a leader”. Are you kidding me?.

Let’s get this straight: Miles Garrett slams his equipment in a public meltdown, and he’s a “leader.” Shedeur Sanders gets a speeding ticket, and he’s an “immature character risk”. Garrett gets a worse speeding ticket, and it’s a “veteran’s learning experience”. This is the double standard that proves the conspiracy. The media is protecting Garrett, their anointed star, and they are protecting the front office by newseverything except their failed golden boy, Dillon Gabriel.

Now, the team is in its “by-week hell week”. The fans are in open revolt. The media is finally turning on its own creation. So, what is the brilliant solution from Coach Stefanski? Is it finally giving the keys to the kid with the live arm and the confidence to challenge a defense?

Of course not. That would be admitting they were wrong.

Instead, Stefanski has publicly ruled out benching Dillon Gabriel. The fix, he suggests, is that he might give up play-calling. Cabot even suggested the real fix is to… trade for another wide receiver. This is, quite literally, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The ship has hit the iceberg, the water is at their ankles, and the solution is to trade for another violin.

They will do anything, fire anyone, and change anything except the damn quarterback. This is the ultimate proof. Benching Gabriel would be an admission of catastrophic failure. This front office, this coaching staff, and this media establishment are so drowning in their own ego, so terrified of being wrong, that they would rather lose the rest of their games, lose their fans, and lose their franchise player in Miles Garrett than admit the truth: they picked the wrong guy.

To ensure that wrong guy can never be proven wrong, Stefanski finally admitted the darkest part of the agenda: Shedeur Sanders gets zero first-team reps in practice. None. They are not just failing to prepare him; they are actively sabotaging his development to protect their own pride.

The leaked footage of a reporter mocking a player’s height wasn’t the start of the story. It was the end of the lie. It exposed the truth that the people in charge are not serious. They tried to assassinate the character of a young man because he wouldn’t play their game, and they propped up a guy who is “unwatchable”. Now, the entire city knows. The agenda is dead. The only question left is how much longer will this franchise be allowed to burn just to protect the pride of the men who lit the match?