Dylan Sampson Camp Update — August 31: The Backfield Settles at Four
2026 NFL Season · Monday, Aug 31
Cut day settled Cleveland's backfield: Dylan Sampson is on the fifty-three with Quinshon Judkins, Raheim Sanders and fullback Michael Burton, while Davon Booth and Ahmani Marshall were waived. Judkins also returned to practice Monday, which closes the opening last week's episode was built around.
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Cut day settled the Cleveland backfield. Dylan Sampson is on the initial 53 announced Sunday among four backs — Quinshon Judkins, Sampson, Raheim Sanders and fullback Michael Burton — per the team's announcement at ClevelandBrowns.com, with Davon Booth and Ahmani Marshall both waived the same day. That answers the third-back battle we were watching: Raheim Sanders, the running back, not to be confused with quarterback Shedeur Sanders, kept the job. Booth's exit came three days after he scored an eight-yard touchdown in Thursday's finale, per Scott Petrak at BrownsZone.
The bigger correction runs through the lead back. Last week's episode leaned on Judkins nursing "a little something nagging," and framed Sampson's readiness as mattering more with the ceiling one injury report away. That framing is dead, and quickly: Judkins returned to practice Monday, per Daniel Dobish at Athlon Sports, roughly a day after our episode published. The opening the file was watching closed before the week really started, and we'd rather say so than carry the old framing forward.
Sampson himself stayed invisible, again. The finale's ballcarriers of record were rookie quarterback Taylen Green, with eight carries for 66 yards, and Booth, per Petrak; no account places Sampson in the game, which is not the same as saying he sat. That makes two straight games without a Sampson sighting, and no practice charting surfaced either — the file's last first-hand evidence remains the 43-yard screen in Chicago.
Back in June we said Sampson's case was the hands — a rookie year with more receiving yards than rushing yards, four of every five targets caught — and that his job was passing downs in a Todd Monken offense built to throw to backs. Nothing this week touched that case in either direction. What the week supplied instead was clarity around it: the room is three true backs, the lead back is practicing, and the passing-down question now waits for real games. We'll pick the thread back up when there's usage to chart.
_Data via nflverse._
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