Why Shedeur Sanders starting preseason opener is ‘lose lose' for Browns

Yahoo

06-08-2025

Yahoo Sports' Jason Fitz and Caroline Fenton discuss Cleveland's decision to start the rookie quarterback in Friday's game against the Panthers and - no matter what - it will simply fuel the criticism towards the former Colorado star.
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Video Transcript
This is, to me, the ultimate lose-lose for the Browns.
And I know Browns fans are gonna get my mentions, and they're gonna get so mad at me.
I, let me be clear, I'm not anti-Shadour.
In fact, I'm rooting for Shadour at this point.
I think the narrative has gone so far the wrong way on Shadour.
I would love Shadour to come in and absolutely crush it.
But this is a lose-lose for the Browns because he's going into this game, by the way, in part.
As you saw the tweet earlier from Mary Kay Cabot, because of the hamstring concerns on two of the four other quarterbacks, they, they're limited to the position.
So now he's starting.
You don't want to put Flacco in any sort of a weird risk situation.
He's at the top of your depth chart like all of this leads us to Shadour starting.
So now what?
If he goes in and he's absolutely terrible, it only feeds everybody that wants to find a reason to hate Shadour Sanders.
So that's negative portion number one.
Also understanding that he's coming off of missing time with the sore shoulder, how many reps has he really gotten with everybody?
Like, all of these things are gonna make it difficult.
Then the other side of it is if he comes in and absolutely crushes it, if he just nails everything you could possibly ask him to nail.
Well, now the Browns are gonna be in an even worse PR situation where the world is going to expect massive changes to their depth chart based on the limited amount of actual film we're getting on Shadour.
So now, all of us sitting in front of a microphone, everybody on Twitter is gonna start just yelling at the Browns about 20s, 25 plays that we're supposed to use as more weight than any of the practices.
The Browns' coaching staff told us everything they needed to tell us about where they think Shadour is in his process by having him fourth in the depth chart.
So nothing has changed in the last 72 hours that's suddenly going to make the coaches catapult him to number one overall.
So, the problem here is if he's wildly successful, it only builds pressure for suddenly them to make changes.
He may not be ready for or they as an organization may not be ready to support.
And if he comes out and he sucks, instead of it just being, hey, here's a fifth-round quarterback that's trying to work these things out and get better, It's got to be, well, Shadour's not good enough.
Like, this is all such a wild loss for the Browns.
If it's any win or lose, it still loses for popular conversation around Cleveland.
And the fan base just gets, it has a megaphone so all of the conversation becomes magnified.
If he does go out there and let's say throws for 200 yards, 2 touchdowns, and 0 picks.
And I understand that in the NFL if you are listening to the fans pretty soon, you will be sitting with the fans, but you are naive to think that.
That kind of conversation on social media and amongst the fan base and on the first takes of it all doesn't matter inside of a locker room and in front of a front office.
And I think that that's the reason why a lot of teams, 31 teams in the league, decided to pass on Shadore Sanders, because you are damned if you do and you are damned if you don't.
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