The Cleveland Browns have five quarterbacks on their roster. One, Joe Flacco, is a Super Bowl MVP and 17-year veteran.
Another, Kenny Pickett, was a first-round draft pick just three years ago. Deshaun Watson remains injured, but the fourth QB was the Browns’ third-round pick this year, 96th overall, out of Oregon. That was Dillon Gabriel.
Finally there is the Browns’ fifth-round pick this year. But that one, the low man in the Cleveland QB pecking order may be the one who ends up winning the starting job â Shedeur Sanders.
At least, that was the rather startling prediction offered by a former head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs, Herm Edwards, speaking on Friday in a radio interview.
Sanders ‘Knows How to Do Things’
âHeâs a pro. He knows how to do things,” the Chiefs coach from 2006 to 2008 said of the former Colorado signal caller. “Heâs going about it the right way. When the lights come on and they start playing in the preseason â look out!â
But Edwards, who also coached the New York Jets from 2001 through 2005 before taking over the Chiefs’ job, went on to make a more specific and shocking prediction. Despite being the quarterback with the least credentials, Sanders will beat out his three competitors and become the Browns’ starter.
Really?
âI think when the preseason starts, the eye test tells me, heâs going to find a way to beat those guys out,â the 71-year-old Edwards said in the interview.
It is true that despite holding a highly coveted NFL head coach’s job for eight years, three with the Chiefs, Edwards was not the most successful head coach. In his final year with Kansas City he guided the team to a 2-14 season. In four of his eight years, his teams finished with losing records. So perhaps his credibility is not the highest.
Not Just Edwards Seeing Bright Future for Sanders
It should be added, then, that Edwards this week was not alone in predicting that Sanders will open the 2025 season as the Browns’ starter.
âIt is going to be so much pressure put on this organization. It has been years and years and years since the Browns have had a consistent, good quarterback. And you sneak and get this one in the fifth round,” said analyst James Jones of the FS1 network.
“If he steps into this preseason and he plays well and he looks like heâs been looking out here at practice, and he looks like the Shedeur Sanders from Colorado, you have to start this young boy week one,â Jones continued.
Sanders is perhaps best known for his media-friendly personality and sophisticated ability to market himself commercially â a trait he likely picked up from his father and college coach Deion Sanders, an NFL Hall of Famer, eight-time Pro Bowl pick, and inarguably one of the greatest cornerbacks of all time. But the elder Sanders has also made the most of his flamboyant persona as “Prime Time.”
But based on reports from the Browns spring practices, the quarterback “made an impression” on his coaches. As a result, when training camp opens in late July, Shedeur Sanders’ bid to out-compete his fellow quarterbacks will likely be taken more seriously than a typical fifth round pick in a crowded field otherwise would be.
“If Shedeur Sanders continues to progress in training camp like he has over the past two weeks, heâll narrow the gap on the other three Browns quarterbacks in the competition,” wrote Browns correspondent Mary Kay Cabot of Cleveland.com.
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