Despite the undeniable noise surrounding him before and after the NFL Draft, Shedeur Sanders currently sits at the bottom of Cleveland’s quarterback depth chart. The former Colorado football star has maintained a positive perspective amid his uphill battle for a starting spot with the Browns.
Sanders recently spoke with Sports Illustrated’s Conor Orr about his lack of first-team reps this offseason.
“It’s not my place to answer … to even be able to get the answer to that,” Sanders said. “I feel like it’s not in my control, so I’m not even gonna think about that or have that even in my thought process, or why it is. There’s a lot of people that want to have the opportunity to be at this level, and I’m here. And I’m thankful to have the opportunity. So whenever that is, it is.”
Sanders’ mature outlook on his situation has prompted deserving praise from Orr and other analysts. Orr left a simple but important message in the headline for his latest piece on the Browns rookie: “Shedeur Sanders was not a first-round pick, so don’t treat him like one.”
Orr related the way national media pundits and countless fans put Sanders on a pedestal to someone randomly starting a forest fire. Unlike much of the football world, Sanders isn’t putting himself in conversations he doesn’t belong in until he earns that right.
“Unsurprisingly, Sanders has a better grasp of himself than any of us do. It’s not our job to help him, per se, but for the sake of our own sanity and credibility, we should remind ourselves of the facts of his case daily,” Orr wrote. “By the time we all got the chance to look around, it was impossible to tell how the whole thing had started. Upon forensic review, the cause of the fire wasn’t substantive—it was mostly just a string of thoughtless gestures.”
The Sporting News’s Billy Heyen also lauded Sanders for his maturity when faced with questions about his first-team practice snaps – or lack thereof.
“That's really solid perspective from Sanders. Once he fell to pick No. 144 in the fifth round of the NFL Draft, he could've taken on two different mindsets. He could've felt like the world was out to get him, or he could've realized that he still had an opportunity and try to make the most of it,” Heyen wrote.
“At least in those words, Sanders appears to understand he shouldn't take this chance for granted. If he keeps that mindset, he'll have a chance to move up the depth chart as time goes on.”
Thanks to a recent hamstring injury for Kenny Pickett, Sanders could receive more short-term opportunities to make his way up Cleveland’s quarterback totem pole. However, Dillon Gabriel and Joe Flacco may have something to say about that.