With the Browns trading Joe Flacco, rookie Shedeur Sanders is now one snap away from playing on Sunday afternoons. No longer the third-string, emergency quarterback, he is the direct backup to fellow rookie Dillon Gabriel. And perhaps that was part of the plan all along, strengthening a Raporeport from last week.
“The expectation is that Sanders will play at some point this season when he’s ready”, Ian Rapoport wrote, explaining why the Browns kept him as the third-string quarterback, rather than the backup. “When he does play, it would be with a full week of practice and a game plan built for him”.
Rapoport also wrote that Sanders has shown consistent improvement behind the scenes. Even though the Browns felt Gabriel was ahead of him in training camp, and remains so, he seems to imply the organization expects, and has expected, a tipping point at which that changes.
Dillon Gabriel is a highly experienced college quarterback who came into the league with a high floor. His NFL preparedness is hardly surprising, but Shedeur Sanders, needless to say, entered the league under different circumstances. Perhaps a humbling was part of that process, even learning not to talk while moving his lips.
Fairly recently, Shedeur’s father, Deion Sanders, said that he had “a feeling” his son would start this year. The implication appeared to be that it was a little more than a feeling, though. Either way, Sanders didn’t help his cause with his poor final preseason performance.
Unfortunately for Gabriel, his backup is going to remain the headline. And there will be a vocal contingent of the fanbase waiting for him to fail, seeing every snap that Sanders doesn’t play as a conspiracy against him. But that’s the reality of the situation when you draft a celebrity quarterback whose public perception did not match private evaluations.
Shedeur Sanders was supposed to be a first-round pick. ESPN repeatedly cut to his custom-made draft room, emblazoned with words like “Legendary”, throughout the broadcast until he stopped showing up in the room. Dillon Gabriel was never going to be that kind of prospect or personality, so the attention is still going to funnel toward his backup.
Of course, the Steelers have to prepare for Gabriel—and then is former backup, Joe Flacco, now with the Bengals. But they probably should also prepare for Shedeur Sanders. The simple fact of the matter is that he can now take the field ta any moment. Even if that means the Browns installing a package of plays for him to run.
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