Cleveland Browns signal-caller Shedeur Sanders has fought through one of the more trying spring/summer stretches any rookie NFL quarterback has faced in recent memory, short of battling a serious injury.
Sanders found himself at the pinnacle of stardom in college football, as he and Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter turned around a Colorado program that was dead on their arrival in Boulder two years before.
The 23-year-old QB headed into the draft process as a first- or second-round prospect on most prominent national draft boards before sliding all the way to the early portion of Round 5. The cheers that boomeranged around Folsom Field over the past two years turned into relentless jeers echoing across the relatively soulless abyss of social media.
The haters had their day. But sometime soon, Sanders will get his -- and he's doing everything he can to prepare for the chance to seize it.
Cleveland's young signal-caller, who presumably enters training camp in July as QB4 despite a solid spring that turned a few heads on the coaching staff, said as much in a video he posted to Instagram on Friday, July 18.
"You know, no excuses. I’ll put in the work and do what I have to do," Sanders said. "Bout to be time to be legendary, whenever that time is. You know, mentally, at the very beginning, it’ll be a challenge. But I like the challenge now."
It's more a myriad of challenges rolled into one that Sanders faces in his rookie campaign, though breaking it down his top three challenges with roughly two months remaining before Week 1 all have names -- Joe Flacco, Kenny Pickett and Dillon Gabriel.
Flacco and Pickett are the frontrunners for the starting job because they are veterans with winning records as NFL starters, and the Browns face a brutal six-game stretch to open the year that starts with the Cincinnati Bengals and includes five consecutive contests against 2024-25 playoff teams after that.
If losing happens early and often in Cleveland, which looks like the most likely scenario, Sanders could see his chance arrive earlier than later. However, Gabriel is also a rookie and could get the nod ahead of Sanders, as the Browns selected him earlier in the draft and have afforded him more reps with the starters to this point in the offseason.
Both Sanders and Gabriel may have just this year to prove themselves, as Cleveland owns two first-round picks in 2026 -- their own and that of the Jacksonville Jaguars -- and could look at a quarterback early in the proceedings next April.
