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Maybe the weirdest thing about Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders’ NFL Draft adventure is that he was on the scene when the Browns made another colossal error at the quarterback position, but he was almost a bystander.
It can be argued he was involved, but only in the way a Mercedes C-Class that gets driven into another car’s fender is involved in an accident. It was the driver at fault, in this case Cleveland general manager Andrew Berry.
Sanders did nothing more than sit there looking like the best fifth-round quarterback prospect in recent NFL Draft history, rated as the best or second-best at his position by nearly all of the most prominent media analysts but left untouched into the fifth round, with five quarterbacks chosen before him. One of those was Oregon’s Dillon Gabriel, who began his college career in 2019, will turn 25 in December and stands just 5-11.
Naturally, it was the Browns who took him in round 3.
“It wasn’t necessarily the plan going into the weekend to draft two quarterbacks,” Berry told reporters Saturday. “We believe in the best player available. We didn’t expect him to be available in the fifth.”
Who’s going to tell him?
You know, that the only reason Sanders was there to be chosen in the fifth round is because the Browns took Gabriel in the third when they easily could have grabbed Sanders?
The organization that has employed 39 different starting quarterbacks in this century, that gave up three first-round picks and a cap-crippling $230 million contract for DeShaun Watson and got back 19 starts and nine victories over three years, that drafted Brandon Weeden, Brady Quinn and Johnny Manziel in the first round and got just 40 combined starts and 10 wins out of them – this is the team that came off a 3-14 season and then spent two draft picks on guys who, if the 2025 season comes anywhere near what the organization would intend, will not play a snap this autumn.
There’s no way the Browns can carry four quarterbacks on their roster, which means one of Sanders, Gabriel, Kenny Pickett or veteran Joe Flacco will either need to be injured or cut before the opener. Of Flacco’s $4 million contract, all but one million is guaranteed. Pickett is on the fourth year of his rookie deal, with $2.62 million owed to him. The dead cap money on either one of those deals is not indigestible, but the Browns already are committing more than $35 million of their cap dollars to an unavailable Watson.
MORE: Cleveland Browns QB depth chart
This is the mess into which Sanders was drafted. One can forgive him if the thought at least crossed his mind that he would have been better off if he’d finished Saturday in the category of UDFA.
On the other hand, one could view this as the first thing Cleveland has done right at the QB position since grabbing Bernie Kosar out of Miami in 1985.
Sanders was on the clock more than nine hours, available for any NFL team to choose him with one of the 143 selections that passed in that stretch, and along the way he morphed from bonanza to bust to bargain.
ESPN draft analyst Mel Kiper still is vehemently defending his ranking of Sanders as the No. 5 overall player in the draft, praising his toughness and command on the field. “The NFL has been clueless for 50 years when it comes to evaluating quarterbacks,” he exclaimed on his network’s draft coverage, and in his defense you have the draft positions of Aaron Rodgers (24th overall), Dan Marino (27th), Drew Brees (32nd), Russell Wilson (75th), Joe Montana (82nd), Warren Moon (undrafted) and, of course, Tom Brady (199th).
MORE: Winners & losers from Shedeur Sanders saga
Sanders was the most accurate passer in Division I last season and threw for 4,134 yards and 37 touchdowns. Those who point out the Buffaloes’ two-year record with him at QB was just 13-12 are twisting the truth beyond recognition, ignoring that CU was 1-11 and lost those games by an average of 32 points the year before he and his head coach/father Deion arrived in Boulder.
He is not elite in terms of arm strength and mobility, but some of those on the list had limitations in those areas. It’s not inconceivable Sanders could become the next in that sequence to drastically outperform his draft position, but it feels a good deal less likely given the identity of the team that chose him and the circumstance he enters.
Just before 8 a.m. Saturday, four hours before the fourth round of the draft opened, Sanders tweeted a message that rose above any frustration or embarrassment to which he might have been entitled: “Another day another opportunity to get a chance to play the game I love. Thank you GOD.”
If Sanders greeted the day wanting to be drafted in the worst way, the Browns granted that wish, on every level.
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