Shedeur Sanders isn’t getting reps with the Browns’ first-team offense because he is a fifth-round pick and we’re, like, two days into training camp. This is a fact I thought we all understood, until Sanders was asked about it Friday.
But rather than write about the question itself—who am I to judge, really, when as a beat reporter I once confused David Carr and Prince Amukamara (long story)—I think this is a perfect point to refresh our understanding of Sanders and, certainly, compliment him on his handling of the answer.
We should have all exited the draft process knowing deep down that the moment Sanders slipped out of the first round, he ceased to be a first-round talent. I have my own theory about Sanders’s stock being artificially propped up not only by his father but by media entities with a vested interest in covering Sanders’s “fall” when he inevitably “slid,” but the reason is erroneous now. Whether it was because of talent, performance, lineage, attitude or some amalgamation of all of the above, Sanders was chosen in the fifth round by a team that picked another quarterback two rounds before, traded for one in March and signed another in April. This, after some of the more grounded draft analysts who were connected to actual team personnel were introducing the idea of Sanders not being a first-round pick as early as January.
Sanders will continue to exist as a non-first-round talent until actual games and meaningful practices take place, at which time he may end up getting the chance to reclassify himself as a potential fringe starter after outplaying other quarterbacks on the roster. Then, and only then, should we start to broach the topic of him earning meaningful first-team reps.
Yet again, as we tend to do many times in life, in much higher-stakes situations than football, we have fallen into the trap of confusing fame and importance. I’m sorry to yet again remind Sanders drumbeaters that any other presuppositions we have of this rookie are purely fantasy—as of now.
Maybe I am short on memory, but I don’t recall Chris Oladokun being a part of the Steelers’ first-team rep discussion back in 2022, or Sean Clifford in Green Bay the year after. Though I’m encouraged by what I feel is a teachable moment. There is something in all our lives, be it a belief system, purported truism or other flawed infrastructure that we feel is absolutely correct with all our hearts but is simply false, broken or ineffective. Maybe Deion Sanders or Mel Kiper presses a certain button for you. Maybe what they say feels true. That doesn’t make it so. The football world has spoken.
Sanders himself seems to have grasped this beautifully. Just listen to him answer the question. In my mind, he has reasons to be miffed, not just because of the tenor of the question—the team’s general manager just criticized his speeding tickets more than he did two dozen accusations of sexual misconduct against Deshaun Watson, after all—and he maintains a smile, pauses and delivers the following missive:
“It’s not my place to answer … to even be able to get the answer to that. I feel like it’s not in my control, so I’m not even gonna think about that or have that even in my thought process, or why it is. There’s a lot of people that want to have the opportunity to be at this level, and I’m here. And I’m thankful to have the opportunity. So whenever that is, it is.
“But it doesn’t make me feel down or it doesn’t make me feel left out or anything. Because I know who I am as a person, I know who I am as an individual and I know what I can bring to this team. So, I can never feel less than in any circumstance.”
Unsurprisingly, Sanders has a better grasp of himself than any of us do. It’s not our job to help him, per se, but for the sake of our own sanity and credibility, we should remind ourselves of the facts of his case daily. The idea that he was going to be a first-round pick was akin to someone flicking a cigarette into dry brush and starting a forest fire. By the time we all got the chance to look around, it was impossible to tell how the whole thing had started. Upon forensic review, the cause of the fire wasn’t substantive—it was mostly just a string of thoughtless gestures.
Ignoring this and carrying that energy into Sanders’s NFL career isn’t fair. Grading him on a curve akin to a failed first-round pick—itself a flawed pursuit given how many teams misevaluate talent—robs him of the chance to do what he is trying to do now. What we all believed he needed to do to some degree, which is to start from the beginning, free of any presuppositions, nepotism or hype, and allow his skills and actions to provide a rubric on which he’ll now be judged.
Shedeur Sanders is, at this moment, a fifth-round pick just a few days into training camp. Anything else is, as it always was, our problem. A failure to confront reality.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Shedeur Sanders Was Not a First-Round Pick, So Don’t Treat Him Like One.
