Dolphins tabbed to be Colorado Buffaloes football’s Shedeur Sanders’ first NFL opponent as Browns’ QB1

ESPN’s Harry Douglas has a bold prediction for Colorado Buffaloes football legend Shedeur Sanders’ NFL debut: the Cleveland Browns’ seventh game of the season, against the Miami Dolphins at Huntington Bank Field.

Douglas added that he believes it can come sooner than that.

“Game 7, that’s when the Cleveland Browns play the Miami Dolphins. And if Shedeur Sanders goes into training camp and he’s lights out, and he’s playing very well in preseason, there’s gonna have to be conversations that it might be earlier than that. Because what you don’t want to do, if you’re Kevin Stefanski, is have a guy show that he is the guy, but you not play him. Then you’re gonna have some controversy when it comes to your roster and older players who are trying to win right now,” Douglas said on ESPN’s “Get Up.”

Douglas may want to refer to Friday’s offseason updates from Berea. They don’t point to Sanders being ready to step in for the Browns under center anytime soon.

The “Grown QB” ran fewer plays than Dillon Gabriel, Joe Flacco, and Kenny Pickett at OTAs and minicamp. He's seen as being far behind Gabriel in terms of knowledge and schematics.

“The Browns stunned the NFL world selecting Sanders in the fifth round after taking Gabriel in the third. But they didn’t necessarily veer from their principles in the selection,” Yahoo Sports’ Jori Epstein wrote.

“Sanders arrived in Cleveland after completing 70.1% of passes for 14,347 yards, 134 touchdowns and 27 interceptions in four total seasons across Jackson State and Colorado. His college experience is deep also, but there is belief among many in the NFL that its volume and diversity trails what Gabriel learned in six years. Browns coaches did not ask Sanders to integrate the same volume of playbook during minicamp as his counterparts, reflected when he did not take first-team snaps as the other three did. Sanders’ arm strength and playmaking impressed on the concepts he did run.”

Projecting Sanders to get anything more than garbage-time preseason snaps is bold. It borders on bait territory. Especially when the other rookie, Gabriel, is a potential starting option in Week 1.

The Shedeur hype train is clearly out of hand if he’s still being projected to take over the starting job as the fourth-string option at the start of training camp, given what we found out Friday.