Before the commencement of our required reading on Shedeur Sanders, an announcement: Myles Garrett is ridiculous and will almost certainly bypass T.J. Watt and Michael Strahan, who currently hold the NFL’s single-season sack record of 22.5. It feels sinful to mention anything tangentially connected to Cleveland’s offense when the defense logged 10—ten!—sacks on a Raiders offense that may set the NFL standard for across-the-board ineptitude. The fact that the Raiders single-blocked Garrett with Stone Forsythe in obvious passing downs—in addition to counting on Ashton Jeanty in pass protection—feels deserving of a congressional investigation.
We now resume our regularly scheduled programming …
If the Browns’ offensive game plan in their 24–10 win over the Raiders was an indictment of their faith in Shedeur Sanders, it would not be quite as expressive as the passive-aggressive 2014 masterpiece in which Marty Mornhinweg, as offensive coordinator of the Jets, ran the ball 49 times in a game against the Dolphins amid a supposed disagreement over the balance of the offense. But, it was not far off.
Before the game began, Sanders, drenched in his trademark confidence, answered a question from a sideline reporter about what he’s going to show himself, Browns fans and his teammates. His response was: “I’m who they’ve been looking for.”
One could tell that was his mindset, especially in moments like at the 12-minute mark of the fourth quarter, when Sanders, faced with a third-and-26 in field goal range, opted to bomb a pass to Cedric Tillman that, at least for a moment, looked like a one-on-one opportunity, in lieu of checking the ball down and making a field goal easier for his kicker. While I am no body language expert, Sanders looked like someone who was ready to take the governor switch off the golf cart but couldn’t find where the club pro hid the keys. Browns coach Kevin Stefanski and play-caller Tommy Rees did their best to allow a completely disoriented Raiders offense to beat itself. The full Sanders experience was not quite what they were looking for.
That was evident in much of what Cleveland did Sunday, from the Wildcat package featuring Quinshon Judkins in the red zone—dusting off some of Rees’s Jalen Milroe packages at Alabama—to the reliance on the run game or shorter passes that could capitalize on Cleveland’s collection of young skill-position players adept at gaining yards after the catch, it was clear that the Browns had no interest in making this a showcase. If the Browns didn’t make the point obvious enough, Cleveland punted from inside the Raiders’ 30-yard line. Sanders’s first touchdown pass, a 66-yard behind-the-line swing toss to Dylan Sampson—while not taking anything away from an incredible moment for a young quarterback making his first start—was a showcase in artful downfield blocking and a defense’s complete unwillingness to offer an ounce of aggression.
And, soberly, why would the Browns have pushed Sanders based on how the game was unfolding? A short field and a 13-yard touchdown drive spotted them an early 7–0 lead. Garrett was, as we mentioned, wholly unblockable. Geno Smith was inaccurate and painfully late on several potentially game-breaking throws. (He finished 11-of-20 for 209 yards, one touchdown and one interception.)
All that said, the game will successfully accomplish two things, neither of which are what the Browns had intended.
• It will no doubt inflame the absolutely ludicrous notion that the Browns are somehow purposefully setting Sanders up to fail. That idea has gone horrifically mainstream, with the CBS broadcast leading off by talking about Sanders finally getting reps (an extension of the same absurd complaint that Sanders did not get starter reps the week before, when he was the backup—to a fellow rookie starter who needed as many reps as humanly possible, as well).
• It contained just enough breadcrumb moments from Sanders to crack the door open on a legitimate quarterback competition—this despite the clear discrepancy in what was offered to Sanders on the play sheet versus what has been offered to Gabriel in his game action. While this will primarily amount to a plume of talk radio noise, Sanders’s rollout downfield completion for 53 yards in the first quarter was one of the best singular offensive moments of Browns football this season (and really the past two seasons). Garrett had an outsized reaction on the sideline, which, to me, looked like guarded optimism.
The moments in between depend on your own personal interpretation, but the truth is that Sanders had instances when he stepped up in the pocket—a welcome sign—and moments where he began that alarming drift away from the line of scrimmage. He had moments where he was perfectly decisive and moments where he looked as though he was trying to remember whether this was professional football or international cricket. He passed up easier completions for more adventurous opportunities downfield, which he showed a penchant for in the preseason. While the approach from Rees and Stefanski may have seemed overly, painfully conservative, it was those guardrails that kept Sanders from providing a lifeless Raiders squad with momentum. Sanders threw an interception—a poor decision on a curl route that required him to look off a defender in order to widen his window, which he did not do. I counted at least one more near interception that a more skilled defense would have devoured.
To Sanders’s credit, the Raiders tried to mimic the way the Ravens showed all-out pressure on critical passing downs last week, and this time he looked more prepared for what was clearly the en vogue pressure to stop him. His lone sack appeared to be the result of strong coverage, though we’re at the immediate mercy of the television camera angle.
The hope is that Cleveland has as strong a game plan to deal with what happens next on the Sanders front. He was the Browns’ first rookie quarterback to win his initial start since Eric Zeier in 1995—and back then a nation’s worth of sports programming powered in part by Sanders’s mere existence did not exist. My guess? They knew that was going to be the biggest challenge all along. For the record, after the game, Stefanski said he wasn’t getting into that on Sunday.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Two Reasons Shedeur Sanders’s Winning Debut Start Will Keep People Talking.
