In a week of game-planning that wasn’t designed for him.
In a season he hasn’t taken practice reps with the first-team offense.
For a head coach who would still have him as the No. 3 quarterback if Joe Flacco hadn’t been traded.
Shedeur Sanders finally got some regular season snaps on Sunday for the Cleveland Browns. Predictably, he looked like a fifth-round rookie quarterback who was pressed into an opportunity rather than prepared for it. Next week, that might be different. Now the Browns have to strike the uneasy balance of both ramping up Sanders as the potential Week 12 starter while monitoring the health of Dillon Gabriel in the concussion protocol. And how this next week goes could tell us what the remainder of the season is going to look like for Sanders.
One way or another, it’s got to improve from the 23-16 loss to the Baltimore Ravens. A game that will be pointed to by Sanders critics as proof positive that some of his roughest traits — taking sacks, running backward to escape pockets, getting mechanically loose on throws, holding the ball too long — are still front and center. In two quarters of work, Sanders went 4 for 16 for 47 passing yards with one interception and no offensive points. The result was the Browns squandering a 16-10 halftime lead and falling to 2-8.
In some respects, Sanders’ numbers could have been worse, with Ravens safety Kyle Hamilton dropping an interception that was thrown into his chest, and the Browns recovering a fumble that Sanders lost. In other respects, it also could have been better, with a 30-yard touchdown pass to wideout Gage Larvadain getting broken up at the last moment in the end zone. That throw, along with a 25-yard completion to tight end Harold Fannin, were two bright spots in an otherwise bleak half of football.
So what does one half of football mean when Sanders wasn’t the quarterback prepped for this chance? Well, at least two things.
First, it gives you a snapshot of why the initial plan going into the regular season was to have Flacco on the roster and backing up Gabriel once he ascended to the starting job. The staff didn’t want Sanders pressed into action like he was against the Ravens, largely because it was going to look like what it ended up looking like — a rookie who has a long way to go with his development, and a coaching staff that is already pouring every opportunity into Gabriel. It’s hard enough trying to hone one rookie quarterback who is starting, a quarterback who needs all the practice reps and live action snaps he can get. But now you put a second rookie behind him and there is virtually no way to operate without starving one or both of them.
This is part of the flawed idea that Sanders should have been taking snaps with the first-team offense all along. That’s not how you develop a rookie quarterback to be a starter. You don’t split up those reps between two rookies, because then neither is getting what they fully need at the position. Again, this is why the initial plan was to have Flacco as Gabriel’s backup. Because he doesn’t need reps. Gabriel could eat all the practice reps and then if he were injured in a game, Flacco could step in with a wealth of experience that made him instantly ready for the moment. But when Flacco went out the door and Sanders was promoted to the No. 2 spot, it created a problem. Now you had Gabriel, who needs all the time with the first-team offense to develop as a starter … and you also had Sanders, who needs time with the first team offense to develop as a player. Trying to balance practice reps between both would be doing a disservice to both.
The Browns chose to stick to their plan entering the season and develop one rookie. And when Gabriel went down, it made for a difficult opportunity for Sanders. Whether it was Week 11 or Week 13 or Week 18, he was going play his first NFL snaps at a disadvantage, because he was always going to be a very distant second priority for the team. No amount of bellyaching from the media or sports talk radio or the fan base was going to change that. And the result was what we saw from Sanders on Sunday: a player who was not ready for the moment because he was not prepared for the moment. The mystery of what it would look like when the moment finally came is now gone. We know.
The second thing that Sunday provided is an answer to what this changes for the Browns and Sanders. In a word? Nothing. Gabriel went down with a concussion, but that didn’t knock him out of the starting job. Stefanski made that clear after the loss. When Gabriel clears the concussion protocol, he will once again be the starting quarterback. If he can’t pass the protocols before the Week 12 game against the Las Vegas Raiders, then it will be Shedeur who steps into the job — temporarily.
That declaration should wake up some of the people who are still frustratingly hoping (dreaming?) that the Browns are open to grooming Sanders to be the starting quarterback. They’re not. They haven’t been since the season began. And realistically they were never in that mindset from the moment training camp began. Sanders getting a second-half crash course against the Ravens wasn’t the Browns suddenly changing their tune. It was the coaching staff having no other option on the table. And nothing about Sanders’ performance is going to make Stefanski suddenly think he’s been going about this all wrong. If anything, it’s the opposite. Now the coaching staff has tape to point at and justifiably say, “He’s not ready.”
Can that change? It’s the same answer that has resonated all the way back to Sanders getting snaps in exhibition games: If he absolutely lights it up, that won’t be ignored. Let’s project that out over the course of next week. If Gabriel remains in the concussion protocol and Sanders gets a full week of practice as the No. 1 QB … then he takes that week of practice and translates it to a eyebrow-raising performance against the Raiders … then he’s got a tangible argument. Then he can say “here are the results when you pour 100 percent of these practice opportunities into me”.
Because right now, the primary argument of his supporters is just a theory: Sanders is struggling with development because he’s not getting reps with the first-team offense and not getting attention he needs from the staff. Maybe that’s true. Or maybe his skill set in college — being hyper-accurate and poised in the face of pressure — are born out of an offense system that will never translate on the NFL level. Maybe the speed of the game on this level is too much for him. A vast ocean of wildly successful college quarterbacks have never made it in this league simply because the game never slows down for them.
That might be Sanders. For that matter, it might be Gabriel, too. There are seven more starts to find out. Next week suddenly looms large. Either as Sanders’ first week of being treated like he might be the future of the Browns’ quarterback position, or as the moment he once again got shuffled back to backup role for now and maybe forever.