In This Story
Cleveland Browns
Aug 9, 2025 10:08 AM EDT
He’s too much trouble. The media will eat us alive if we don’t start him, and it’s not worth it. His father will be on the phone every 10 minutes, wondering loudly what we’re doing with him. He showed up at all these pre-draft team meetings unprepared, thinking that he had the NFL by the tail already. His college offense looked nothing like what he’ll face at the next level.
Shedeur Sanders had heard and felt all the slings and arrows directed his way — the ones that saw a second-round talent based on tape drop all the way to the 144th pick in the fifth round of the 2025 draft — and he knew that the only way to fire back was to wait until his first NFL start, and hopefully prove the doubters wrong.
For the most part in the Cleveland Browns’ 30-10 win over the Carolina Panthers on Friday night, Sanders did just that. It wasn’t a blow-away performance statistically; he completed 14 of 23 passes for 138 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 106.8 against the NFL’s worst defense in the 2024 season. But the tape showed a quarterback with some surprises for those who had watched him ply his trade at Colorado, and at Jackson State before that.
First, Sanders was clearly more mobile than he was in college, mostly to his own benefit. For whatever reason, he stayed in the pocket a lot at Colorado behind an abysmal offensive line, which led in large part to his 204 (!) dropbacks under pressure last season. With the Browns, Sanders looked more like Russell Wilson than Jameis Winston in that regard. Moreover, he was ready and able to take advantage of the openings that mobility afforded him.
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“I thought there were a bunch of plays where the guys were working together,” head coach Kevin Stefanski said postgame. “Sometimes, it was in rhythm, and we got to a read because we’re in rhythm and the protection was good. There were other times we had to make plays off schedule and those are the things, again, when you’re at practice, you preach them, and you work those off-schedule plays. So, it was good that those came up tonight.”
Sanders was, for the most part, smart enough to take the easy way when it was there. With 7:10 left in the third quarter, the Browns had first-and-15 at their own 48-yard line. The Panthers were playing Cover-4, and Brenden Bates’s release route gave Sanders an easy pitch-and-catch. Instead of trying to make too much of it, Sanders simply worked through his progressions, moving the sticks in a positive sense.
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One of the debits to Sanders’ play style in college was his tendency to drift in the pocket, leading to needless inaccurate throws. On this touchdown pass to receiver Kaden Davis at the start of the second quarter, Sanders did drift to his left, which is not your best move for downfield accuracy. But when you can fire one right up the chute past three converging defenders for the score… who’s going to argue?
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Not that it was all letter-perfect, nor would reasonable people expect it to be. There were times when Sanders got a bit frantic in and out of the pocket, and some resulting throws he’d surely like back. That’s part of the process. With 6:41 left in the first half, Sanders threw late over the middle to receiver Gage Larvadain, and without Larvadain’s commendable efforts to break up the pass in the other direction, that was going to be a regrettable error.
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Overall, everybody seemed reasonably happy with what they saw.
“I don’t feel like I took full advantage of the opportunity, but it’s something to work on, something to learn from,” Sanders told CBS Sports’ Aditi Kinkhabwala. “I think we did that pretty good. And just being consistent, even though things going our way and not going our way, being able to bounce back and not stay in the hole. Being a quarterback is going to be ups, downs. It’s going to be pros, cons, everything. So you’ve just got to stay level-headed through it.
“I’m thankful for everybody that’s supporting. This organization that gave me an opportunity to come out here and do something I love. So I love the emotions that came with everything, the good, the bad, and that’s what you play football for. But it’s definitely bringing everybody together. It’s a dream come true.”
Dream No. 1 is in the books for Shedeur Sanders; now it’s time to take what he learned and move forward. As for the doubters, they may wake up more surprised than they ever would have expected.
About the Author
Doug Farrar
NFL writer, analyst