The Cleveland Browns are not planning to be punitive about punishing Colorado Buffaloes football legend Shedeur Sanders’ 101 MPH speeding incident in Strongsville, Ohio, on early Tuesday morning.
They will hold it against him in some form, though.
As Cleveland.com’s Mary Kay Cabot noted, the franchise’s evaluation of every potential starting quarterback includes a character assessment.
Naturally, this reckless and, at best, thoughtless or, at worst, selfish behavior will stick in the back of Kevin Stefanski, Andrew Berry, and the rest of the Browns’ brain trust’s minds as they’re pondering choosing their next locker room leader.
“But the Browns are evaluating everything their players do, and the citation goes on the minus side of the ledger. Speeding is one thing, but going 40 mph over the speed limit on a highway after midnight — during rookie orientation — is another,” Cabot wrote.
“The Browns, who declined to comment, will probably chalk it up to a life lesson for a 23-year-old who’s always been a standup young man. But when teams break for the summer, their worst fear is getting a late-night call about one of their players getting hurt or in trouble. The Browns got that phone call on Tuesday morning, and fortunately for everyone involved, the news wasn’t worse.”
Sports talk radio just got all the fodder it needed to push several narratives.
That’ll likely include the idea that Sanders hasn’t matured since his disastrous pre-draft meetings or since the days of a supposed problematic locker room in Boulder, Colorado, with his father’s Buffs.
Surely, those reactions will provoke Coach Prime. Rinse and repeat.
A slow news cycle between the end of Browns OTAs, set for June 19, and the start of training camp on July 18, for rookies, got a bombshell to carry several weeks of discourse.
Hopefully, Sanders learns from it and doesn’t make this the norm.
Cleveland’s decision-makers may not be willing to tolerate this behavior for long.