Shedeur Sanders will be part of the competition for Browns’ QB spot despite drop in NFL draft
Shedeur Sanders will be part of the competition for Browns’ QB spot despite drop in NFL draft
BEREA, Ohio (AP) — Andrew Berry said Friday night that it was less about where Shedeur Sanders got picked than what he would do with the opportunity after getting selected.
It turns out, the Browns general manager was prophetic in describing what he expects out of the player who became his fifth-round pick the next day.
Sanders, who was taken with the 144th-overall selection by Cleveland on Saturday, comes to a team that will have a quarterback competition going into training camp in July.
“I know I’m going to fit in perfect,” Sanders said on a conference call. “I feel like it’s first getting in, showing the respect to the vets, showing them I’m here ready to work, show the coaches and have them understand I’m here ready to work so they can actually understand the real me. That’s what I’m truly thankful to have is the opportunity for people to actually see the real me and not be able to see stuff that could be true or not.”
Sanders — the son of Pro Football Hall of Famer Deion Sanders — comes to a franchise that has failed repeatedly to find a long-term answer at the position since returning to the league in 1999.
The revolving door
The Browns have had 40 quarterbacks make at least one start over the past 26 seasons, including 11 during Kevin Stefanski’s tenure as coach.
This will be the first time since Stefanski was hired in 2020 that the starting spot isn’t settled going into the summer as the Browns attempt to dig themselves out of their disastrous 2022 trade for Deshaun Watson.
Watson’s days in Cleveland are numbered as he potentially will miss the entire 2025 season while recovering from a ruptured Achilles tendon suffered in January. That occurred just three months after he initially injured it against Cincinnati.
Watson is 9-10 with Cleveland with 19 touchdowns, 12 interceptions and a 80.7 passer rating. Owner Jimmy Haslam acknowledged last month the Browns “took a big swing and miss” with the trade.
Cleveland this month signed Joe Flacco, who went 4-1 as a starter in 2023 and led the Browns to the playoffs for only the fourth time since their return. They also acquired former Steelers first-round draft pick Kenny Pickett in a trade with Philadelphia at the start of free agency on March 12.
Berry appeared to find his rookie QB in Oregon’s Dillon Gabriel late in the third round Friday night. However, the Browns had some more draft drama to create.
Cleveland began the draft by trading out of the second-overall spot, where Jacksonville took Sanders’ teammate and Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter. They ended their draft by trading up to grab Sanders, sending a fifth- and sixth-round pick to Seattle.
The Browns are the seventh team in the common draft era — and first since Washington in 2012 — to take two quarterbacks in the first five rounds. It is only the second time both have gone in the third round or later. He’s also the 14th signal caller drafted by the Browns since their return.
Nowhere to go but up
Sanders joins a Browns team that went 3-14 last year and had among the worst offenses in the league. They were last in points per game, third-down conversions, 29th in rushing yards per game, 28th in total yards and 22nd in passing yards. They were also the fourth team this century not to score at least 20 points in one of their first seven games.
Stefanski said at the end of the season he would be calling plays on offense and that Tommy Rees would be the offensive coordinator.
Sanders’ quarterback coach will be Bill Musgrave, who was a teammate of Deion Sanders in San Francisco and remains a close friend. Shedeur Sanders said Pickett reached out to him after the selection was announced.
“I would say the system, the offense. I would say the receivers, the running backs, I would say the O-line. It’s really I want to be able to get in there and meet all these different personalities,” said Sanders about what intrigued him going to the Browns.
Not their first rodeo
This wouldn’t be the first time the Browns have had to deal with a lot of buzz — positive or negative — and possible circus atmosphere surrounding a rookie quarterback.
They traded up to draft Johnny Manziel in 2014. He promised to “wreck this league” only to find himself out of a job after two seasons. Baker Mayfield, who has the most wins by a Browns starter since their return, was featured on “Hard Knocks” as the first-overall pick in 2018.
The Browns also had to deal with criticism of the Watson trade amid accusations by more than two dozen women of sexual assault and harassment during massage therapy sessions when he was with the Houston Texans.
“I’m a Sanders, so it’s always going to be expectations regardless of what pick I am,” Sanders said.
The coaching staff, front office and Haslam did plenty of due diligence on Sanders, conducting interviews at the Shrine Game and scouting combine. He also was one of 30 prospects to visit the Browns and he went to dinner along with Hunter with a group that included Berry, Stefanski and Haslam after Colorado’s pro day.
“We don’t pay much attention to what’s on the outside,” Stefanski said. “We know we’ve spent a lot of time with Shedeur. We know what he’s about. He’s coming in here to work just like all of our other players.”
Berry said the relationship and interactions between the organization and Deion Sanders has been positive. After Shedeur Sanders was selected, a 2018 tweet from Coach Prime about the Browns was making the rounds. In it, Deion Sanders said if he was a young QB, he would not want to go to Cleveland.
That tweet came two months after the Browns finished the 2017 season as the second team in NFL history to go 0-16.
“We don’t typically penalize prospects for, you know, their parents, you know, so to speak, so I can’t say if that was a factor or not for other teams, but that was not a significant factor for us,” Berry said.
Scouting report
Sanders set Colorado single-season records last year as the Buffaloes made a bowl game for only the third time since 2008. He passed for 4,134 yards, 37 touchdowns and accounted for 41 total TDs en route to being named the Big 12’s Offensive Player of the Year and a second-team selection on the AP All-America team.
Besides arm strength, Sanders’ decision-making on the field has also been scrutinized. He took 94 sacks over the last two seasons at Colorado, the most by a QB in the Football Bowl Subdivision.
“We view him as a highly accurate pocket passer. He does a really good job of protecting the ball,” Berry said. “He has enough of the physical characteristics, whether it’s arm strength or mobility. Like all young players, there are things to improve. I think probably much has been said about the number of sacks he’s taken. Some of that is environment and some of that is improvement on his end, for sure. But he has probably a little bit more of a, call it retro or classic style of play.”
Sanders and Gabriel will attend rookie minicamp in two weeks. Then come organized team activities and minicamp before training camp opens.
At that point, Stefanski should know how he will divide the snaps.
“You may not divide them 25, 25, 25, but we feel really confident that we’ll have a plan that is fair to each player and fair to the team as well,” Berry said.
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AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl
By JOE REEDY
AP Sports Writer
