Bills Will Play Shedeur Sanders and Browns This Season

The Buffalo Bills will get a chance to see quarterback Shedeur Sanders this season when they go on the road to face the Cleveland Browns.

Whether Sanders will be on the field or the sidelines remains to be seen.

The Colorado quarterback had a surprise tumble down the NFL draft board, landing with the Browns at the No. 144 overall pick in the fifth round. Though Sanders was once projected as a Top 5 pick, he ended up being the sixth quarterback taken.

Bills Ready for Shedeur Sanders Matchup

The Bills will go on the road to face the Browns this season, though the exact date won’t be known until the NFL releases schedules next month.

Sanders will have plenty of competition for the starting job. The Browns have added some veteran talent after starter Deshaun Watson suffered a torn Achilles during the regular season last year and then reaggravated the injury during rehab.

The Browns now have veterans Joe Flacco, Jameis Winston and Kenny Pickett while also adding Oregon quarterback Dillon Gabriel in the third round of the NFL draft. That could leave Sanders fighting for a spot near the bottom of the depth chart or even the practice squad.

The Bills will face all teams in the AFC North in the coming season, part of the league’s rotating schedule where each team faces a division in-conference division each year. The Bills could also face the Browns again in 2026 if the teams finish in the same spot in their respective divisions.

Bills Handle Rookie Quarterbacks

If Sanders can somehow earn the starting job before facing the Bills, he could be in for a long day against an aggressive Bills defense. The Bills have found great success against rookie quarterbacks under head coach Sean McDermott, earning a 9-4 record in the regular season.

As Kevin Massare of SI.com noted, even some of those losses came with caveats.

“The Bills regular season losses against rookie quarterbacks contains some positives,” Massare wrote. “The first was in 2018 against Sam Darnold, where he won despite having only had 170 yards, 1 TD, and 1 INT. The next loss to a rookie QB was a 9-6 game against Trevor Lawrence, in a week where the Bills offense fell asleep.

“The third was against Mac Jones in terribly windy conditions in which Jones only attempted 2 passes. The final loss to an opposing rookie QB was the last regular season game this past Sunday against the Patriots, in which Drake Maye and Joe Milton faced a mostly backup Bills defense.”

The Bills and Browns have only met two times since quarterback Josh Allen was drafted in 2018, with the Browns winning a 2019 matchup and the Bills beating the Browns in 2022 in a game that had to be moved to Detroit due to a snowstorm in Buffalo.

The Bills also faced Shedeur Sanders’ father, NFL legend Deion Sanders, during his rookie NFL season. The Bills lost to the Atlanta Falcons 30-28 in the November 1989 matchup, with Sanders returning three kicks for 43 total yards and three punts for 39 total yards.