The Shedeur Sanders story hasn’t invited nuanced takes over the seven months since NFL draft weekend. So maybe trying to add some after the weekend of his first start will be as futile as the Raiders trying to combat Myles Garrett with Stone Forsythe.
With that established, I have two opinions coming out of it. So here goes nothing …
The problem with Sanders is simple: He’s a fifth-round pick who started the season as Cleveland’s third quarterback after spending the summer fourth on the depth chart—and most folks refuse to judge him that way. In this weird world, you’re either with him (he should be the team’s starter for the next decade) or against him (you must think he stinks if you don’t believe that), and there’s no in between.
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But I’ll try to get you to the in-between, which I’d say is a pretty rational place, anyway.
First, there’s what we saw Sunday. Sanders made a great throw on the run to rookie receiver Isaiah Bond for 52 yards in the first quarter to set up the Browns’ second score. He also threw a pick into a Raiders team meeting in the second quarter and bounced back from that. He had help, yes—his longest gainer of the day was a 66-yard touchdown throw to Dylan Sampson, and on that throw he was behind the line of scrimmage—but he also had to get past others’ mistakes (i.e., a Jerry Jeudy fumble that wiped out another big play he made).
The coaches, very clearly, felt the need to call the game creatively to help Sanders. The two touchdowns in the first quarter, scored in the red zone’s tight quarters, came with Quinshon Judkins taking direct snaps out of Wildcat looks. The Browns also punted from the Raiders’ 29—a move I can’t remember ever seeing before—on fourth-and-2 with a minute left.
So there was good and bad. And, in my mind, enough potential shown for Kevin Stefanski and his staff to want to dial up an encore.
Part of that is what we saw on Sunday, which was a quarterback that brought some playmaking and enough arm strength to give the Browns a spark. Another part of it, and probably more importantly, was what his teammates observed during the week leading up to the game, and in the game itself—the stuff we couldn’t see on TV. To that end, 12-year veteran Joel Bitonio, the longest-tenured Brown, had a story to share with me from a few days ago.
“Wednesday morning, I usually lift at 7 a.m. and I was in there, and I saw Shedeur in there,” Bitonio said. “I’m not used to seeing him in there at 7, and he had this whole walkthrough with some of the younger guys on the team. He was just walking them through a lot of the passing concepts. I think he did that Wednesday, Thursday and Friday early. Which, as the starting quarterback, you have to take advantage of any reps you can get. I thought that was pretty impressive to see him do that.”
Then, on game day, Bitonio saw, as Sanders’s start approached and then progressed, Sanders refusing to back down to the moment—which, of course, most people expected—since this is the son of one of greatest players in NFL history.
“I feel like he’s been in stardom since he was a kid with his dad being Deion, and everything he ever did was kind of in that limelight,” Bitonio said. “So he was going to be ready for that attention. But still, there’s nothing like it, when you get out there, and it’s your first start, and you’re playing in the NFL. I’m sure it’s been his dream since he was young as possible.”
Even better, under the lights, that sustained for four quarters.
“He seemed calm,” Bitonio said. “Maybe that was a facade on his part, but we got in the locker room, I think he took the second bus over, and when he got there, the whole time it just felt like he was calm and he was ready. He was communicating with people, receivers. Sometimes you see a guy that’s just so jittery in the corner, like, Oh gosh, what’s going on? But he was calm and ready, and I think we got a comfortable first 15 plays for him to get out there and just see what we can do.”
This morning, the Browns know a little more than they did a couple of days ago. But they still have a far less complete picture of what they have in Sanders than they do with Dillon Gabriel, who’s already started six games.
So if I were them, now that I have a better idea of what it looks like for the other 10 guys in the huddle with Sanders out there, I’d be intrigued enough to want to see more.
Maybe it’ll last just another week. Maybe it’ll go for another six.
Either way, the idea that Sanders will be the Browns’ starter in 2026 remains a longshot.
But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be trying to figure out where he fits in that mix—and the best way to do that is to give him a chance to play.
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