It’s not every day that a fifth-round rookie making his first career start for a 2-8 football team is one of the driving storylines of an NFL week. However, Shedeur Sanders is no normal fifth-round rookie, and nothing is ever normal where the Cleveland Browns are concerned.
Sunday in Las Vegas, the 23-year-old will make that first start against the Raiders. But it’s more than just a start; it’s an event. It’s something fans and pundits have long been clamoring for, despite this being his first season in the pros.
It’s also an event the Browns avoided like the plague until they had no choice with Dillon Gabriel in the concussion protocol.
There have already been many proclamations regarding how this game will go. For every person who is certain Sanders will make the Browns look foolish for not starting him earlier, there is one convinced the QB will show why every team in the league passed on drafting on him multiple times.
As with most things, the truth likely lies somewhere in the middle. But frankly, it’s difficult to imagine a scenario where Sanderspalooza doesn’t turn out badly for the Browns, regardless of how the youngster plays.
For his part, Sanders told reporters he’s ready to go—and he’ll be much more prepared after a week of practice reps than in last week’s debacle of a debut against the Baltimore Ravens:
“I’m truly excited for that, knowing that I have a piece of [the] offense and a say so and how things fit my eye and place the players exactly where they need to be. Seeing how they come in and out of routes, seeing the structure of the O-linemen, seeing their set, just having a feeling. I’m more of a feel type of person, so that’s how I learn, that’s how I do everything. I’m not just, ‘Imma just watch it, it’s just going to happen.’ No, I got to be out there, feel it. I got to move around. It’s like so many details that it takes for me to feel my best and play my best and I’m doing everything in my power and the team’s doing everything to help me get prepared.”
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AP Photo/Kirk Irwin
In fairness, Sanders deserves at least a partial mulligan for last week’s four completions in 16 attempts for 45 yards with an interception and two sacks allowed. This isn’t to say he didn’t play poorly—he was mostly awful against the Ravens—but he also received as many first-team practice reps leading up to that game as you did.
Most young quarterbacks would have struggled being thrown to the wolves like that.
But unless those practice reps involve sorcery, Sanders isn’t going to magically morph into the quarterback that so many continue to be convinced he is.
Even against a Raiders defense that is mediocre on a good day, Sanders isn’t going to throw for 300-plus yards and four touchdowns in a breakout performance that shows just how wrong the entire NFL was about his pro prospects.
Cam Newton may still be convinced embattled Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski is out to get Sanders, but the reality is that if Cleveland thought Sanders gave the team a better chance to win games, he’d have been out there long ago.
Fans and draftniks may have fallen in love with Sanders’ last name and highlight-reel plays while leading a mediocre Big 12 team, but the Colorado product fell to the fifth round in April for a reason. Multiple reasons, even.
The playground stuff Sanders pulled at Colorado was fun to watch, but there are precious few quarterbacks in the NFL who can pull that off. He doesn’t have Lamar Jackson’s wheels or Patrick Mahomes’ arm talent. Is Sanders talented? Yes. But he is also deeply flawed.
Sanders doesn’t read defenses well. He struggles working through his progressions. If his primary read isn’t open, he tends to bail out and tries to improvise—and while that may have worked against Kansas, we got an inkling of how it’s going pan out in the NFL last week. His mechanics and footwork is half a mess, and that doesn’t help his accuracy.
That’s part of the reason why the worst-case scenario is more likely than Mel Kiper Jr.‘s fever dream Sunday. The other part is that the Browns offense is hot garbage.
Cleveland’s leading receiver in terms of both catches and yards in 2025 is a rookie tight end. The Browns are 26th in the league in rushing, and the offensive line is among the worst in the NFL.
Sanders is in the same boat Gabriel has been in for weeks—the one bearing the moniker “RMS Titanic” on its side. In many respects, Sanders is being set up to fail.
The problem for both player and team is that if Sanders falls flat (again), it won’t just be a Day 3 rookie struggling in his first start. That happens all the time. But this isn’t just any Day 3 rookie. It’s arguably the most polarizing first-year player in the league.
It will be a full-blown circus, with some pundits screaming that it’s all the team’s fault and the Browns did the signal-caller dusty, while another group yells just as loudly that he should be playing in the UFL. Sanders’ notoriety didn’t do him any favors in April, and it isn’t doing him any now.
Here’s the simple, boring reality: Sanders is a limited quarterback on a bad football team. He’s not an NFL starter. He just isn’t.
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AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki
The realistic best-case scenario for Sanders and the Browns is a pared-down playbook that plays to what the signal-caller does best: Quick throws. Easy reads. Bootlegs and roll-outs. Using running back Quinshon Judkins to stay ahead of the sticks.
If Sanders can throw for say 200 yards, avoid turnovers and stop with the whole “fleeing backward at the first sign of pressure” thing, then that will be a win for both him and the Browns. It won’t mean he is a star in the making and the Browns should have started him months ago, no matter how much some want it to.
It would mean the Browns should let Sanders have another start. Maybe even let him start the rest of the season. We’ve seen enough of Gabriel to know what he is and isn’t.
If Sanders plays competently in Sin City, he deserves a chance to show what he can do.
Unfortunately, realism goes out the window at the first mention of Sanders, and has since before Kiper lost his mind on television when Sanders fell to Round 5. No matter what happens Sunday, people are going to overreact wildly to it.
It puts the Browns in something of a no-win situation. And if this circus of hyperbole and hysteria continues to hover over Sanders, he’s going to be more sideshow than signal-caller.
And that’s pretty much the worst-case scenario for his NFL career.