CLEVELAND, Ohio — Shedeur Sanders was trying to get his mind right for the two-minute drill at the end of the Browns 19-17 victory over the Rams game when Kevin Stefanski pulled him in favor of Tyler Huntley.
A fierce competitor, Sanders approached Stefanski on the sideline, asking him to let him go back out for a chance to pull out the come-from-behind victory.
The Browns had just fallen behind, 17-16, on a Rams touchdown run, and only 2:03 remained in the game. By that time, Sanders had lost his composure on the field and wasn’t making great decisions. He was sacked for the fifth time on his fifth possession, and lost the ball, but was ruled down by contact. He spun out of another sack and fired the ball to Trayveon Henderson over the middle, but the running back dropped it.
The drive before, Sanders reverted to some old Colorado behaviors and drifted back, back, back 24 yards for a sack. He was flushed left for a 2 yard sack on the play before. It was clear he wasn’t seeing the field well enough — or getting protected well enough — and it was time to come out.
“Obviously we didn’t play great as an offense in the second half,” Stefanski said. “That’s never on one person. So we can be better in a bunch of areas and just felt like we wanted to give Snoop (Tyler Huntley) a last drive.”
By that time, Sanders, playing with and against third and fourth teamers, had gone 3 of 6 for 14 yards with no points on the board in his five drives, and was sacked five times for 41 yards, with many of those sacks a result of him retreating or holding the ball too long. He earned a dismal 56.2 rating, but still notched a 95.8 for the preseason overall given his 106.5 from his excellent start against the Panthers. Saturday afternoon was a far cry from that outing, where he threw two beautiful touchdown passes to Kaden Davis and captured the hearts of Browns fans.
“With all of our players, there’s things that we can do better and there’s some good moments out there,” Stefanski said. “But that’s our job as coaches to develop our guys.”
Sanders was also playing with a strained oblique muscle, and had missed three pivotal practices in the past week. He was also playing mostly with guys who will be gone by Tuesday’s 4 p.m. roster cutdown.
Still gearing up for what he thought was his big shot to pull out the game, Sanders walked the length of the sideline to the pylon on the closed end, and then walked back and pleaded his case with Stefanski, who shook his head. The move proved to be the right one, as Huntley marched the Browns 46 yards in six plays to set up Andre Szmyt’s 37-yard gamewinning field goal as time expired.
“(Sanders) is a competitive kid,” Stefanski said. “The plan was to go with Snoop there. But I wouldn’t make any more of it than that.”
Still emotional, Sanders had to be consoled or calmed down by some of his teammates on the sidelines. He put a towel over his head and looked disappointed, and receiver Deandre Carter put his hands on Sanders’ shoulders and talked to him closely and intently. Cornerback Tony Brown, with whom he walked into the game, followed him down the sideline to make sure he was cool. Quarterbacks coach Bill Musgrave also talked to him.
As for walking down the sideline without his helmet on and then reversing field and approaching Stefanski about another chance, Sanders said, “when I walk, that’s just me getting my mind right. That’s just me loading as you can say. In the loading phase in your mind, getting to that mental place to wherever you can handle everything. So that’s when I walk away or like I’m on a bike or anything, I’m just getting my mind right, knowing what it’s going to take to go out there and drive down the field.”
Did he really ask Stefanski to go back in?
“Yeah, I definitely did,” he said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I wasn’t in there, so I don’t know. He was in the middle of calling a play and I was unaware because I was getting ready mentally to get out there for that final two minute drive, I was visualizing it and then I was out. I’m like, ‘oh, okay.’”
Sanders said he was eager to right the ship on that drive after the adversity on his first five. After his 24 yard sack, he knelt on the sidelines for awhile until guard Wyatt Teller urged him to get up.
“Of course that’s the quarterback’s dream and that’s what every quarterback thrives towards those moments,” he said. “So it wasn’t me, but I was happy that Huntley got in and he handled the business. So if anybody else would do it, it’d be him.”
During the Rams’ 4-minutes TD drive, Sanders hopped on the bike to get ready to finish the game strong. On his trip towards Stefanski to ask to go back in, he asked a teammate for his helmet.
“I didn’t know I was out,” he said. “Yeah, I didn’t know. I was on a bike. I was powering up. I was powering up for that two minute drive because that’s just a situation every quarterback dreams for. That’s many situations I’ve been in before and I thought I was in, so then he told me I wasn’t in and I was like, ‘OK.’”
Sanders didn’t have any regrets about showing emotion on the sideline when he wanted a chance to try to win it.
“No, in the heart of competition, that’s what you ask for,” he said. “That’s what you asked for within the game. If I could go back and do anything, I mean it’s always everything in life if you had that chance, but we don’t have the luxury to travel back in time. As a kid, I want to go back and do things differently.
“So overall, of course you wish you can, but in the battle of the moment, in the heat of the battle, you want to be that alpha. You want to be that dog. You want to be out there in that final two minute drive. So of course, small things, of course frustrate, but that’s what happens when you want to be a player to be able to change a franchise.”
Sanders said the five sacks aren’t a back-to-the-drawing board moment for him.
“Truthfully, it happens when you want to make big plays and you want to get a spark in the offense and that’s all it was, getting in those ways,” he said. “You just want to make a spark. You just want to make something happen and it’s good and it’s bad. If one of those ended up the other way and we score, nobody would say anything negative about it. So it comes with the game, it comes with the style of play, but it’s something I try to minimize at most.”
Joe Flacco recalled a challenging rookie preseason moment of his own.
“Yeah, dude, I remember,” he said. “Yeah, big time. I can remember just like yesterday. I mean, that’s part of being a rookie. You know, you’re going to get thrown into situations that maybe you don’t think are ideal. I got thrown into a game against New England with two minutes left. I fumbled on the one-yard line. They scored two plays later.
“That was John Harbaugh’s first preseason game, and he was not happy. I mean, I wasn’t happy either, but like, ‘hey, it’s part of the game.’ It’s part of what makes a football player, is learning how to deal with those situations and learn from them. So, yeah, listen, we’ve all been there. It’s part of the game.”
Always looking on the bright side, Sanders chalked it up to experience.
“I don’t think anything went terribly wrong at all,” he said. “I’m healthy. I’m alive.”
He acknowledged that he must operate much quicker at this level to avoid the sacks. At Colorado, he was sacked an FBS-high 94 times over the past two seasons.
“I’ve got to watch the film, honestly,” Sanders said. “I can’t say what it was. Definitely different places where I could get my eyes in better spots and got through the progressions quicker and regardless to anything. So all those sack stuff, they definitely on me.”
While Sanders struggled, third-round pick Dillon Gabriel excelled in relief of Joe Flacco, putting a field goal and a touchdown on the board on his two drives, and running a textbook two-minute drive at the end of the half, on which he went 9-of-11 for 86 yards, including a 3 yard TD pass to Gage Larvadain. The performance kept Gabriel in the mix fo the backup job to Flacco Week 1, especially if Kenny Pickett isn’t fully recovered from his hamstring injury by Sept. 7 when the Bengals come to town.
As for Sanders? He’ll get back to work running the scout team, and learning how to play ball against the likes of Myles Garrett and Denzel Ward. As he said earlier in the week, he needs more time to cook before he’s ready to play.
“Yeah, I mean, I’m happy I get to go against the first team defense every day in practice now,” he said. “So I get to sharpen my craft and do everything I can to be the best player.”
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