Shedeur Sanders’ value to the Cleveland Browns goes beyond the field

People care about the Cleveland Browns. That’s my takeaway from the recently completed NFL preseason.

Good, bad, but never indifferent, polarizing interests have kept this historic but middling franchise at ground zero of public interest for the past six months. Only Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys have rivaled Cleveland for the spotlight this summer.

And why? Because of Shedeur Sanders, the Browns’ 23-year-old, fifth-round, fourth-string quarterback. Sanders has been in the middle of a social media battleground that has witnessed conspiracy theories, personal attacks and franchise denials.

More than anything, Sanders has generated the sort of passion the Browns have not seen for one of their players since quarterback Baker Mayfield, Cleveland’s first-round selection in 2018.

Shortly before the Browns ended their preseason schedule Saturday with a victory over the Los Angeles Rams, I asked Browns general manager Andrew Berry what he thought about the ongoing obsession with Sanders. On Monday, quarterback Kenny Pickett was traded to the Las Vegas Raiders, all but assuring Sanders a spot on the roster.

“Shedeur, in terms of the popularity of the player, I think, one, being part of turning around two programs at an HBCU and then Colorado; two, just like the amount of notoriety that his father developed throughout his entire career, he’s a heck of a player,” Berry said. “He’s a quarterback who has a little bit of a throwback game, [he’s] super accurate, has piled up the numbers in college football. Stories like that are super marketable, and he’s a great kid.”

Berry earned his undergraduate degree in economics from Harvard and his answer crystallizes what so many have missed in the debate over Sanders: The young quarterback represents a significant value proposition for the Browns.

He brings a cache to the table that the other healthy quarterbacks in the room — Joe Flacco and Dillon Gabriel (Deshaun Watson is still rehabbing from a ruptured Achilles tendon) — do not. Their value is what they bring to the football field. Sanders’ value — with the help of his father, Deion Sanders — goes beyond football and always has, whether at Jackson State or Colorado.

Just walk around the stadium as I did on Saturday and observe so many Browns fans wearing Sanders No. 12 jerseys. Since when have so many fans plopped down $125 for the jersey of a fifth-round, fourth-string quarterback? Sanders ranks first among NFL rookies in jersey sales and has one of the most popular jerseys among current Browns players.

The Browns took Gabriel in the third round, making it clear that they regarded the Oregon rookie higher than Sanders. So, I asked Berry why pick Sanders?

“We actually had them very similarly rated,” he said. “We just felt like quarterback is the most important position in sports. You can never have enough of them; you never know when you’re going to need one. And at the point when we took him, in our wildest dreams we never thought that Shedeur would be available in the fifth round. At that point, it was just like, ‘This guy, he’s just way too talented of a player to be just staring us in the face. Let’s take him, and we’ll figure it out later.’ ”

After the draft, Berry received a call from Deion Sanders, thanking Berry for drafting his son.

“That was a pretty special moment,” Berry recalled “We got to know Deion a lot throughout this scouting process. We spent a ton of time with Shedeur and it was one of those pure moments where you see a father who’s just so happy for his son.

“As a general manager, one of the coolest parts of the job is calling someone and telling them ‘Welcome to the NFL, you’re going to be a member of the Cleveland Browns.’ To be a part of that moment with that family, that’s something I’ll remember for my entire career.”

Berry insisted that the Browns were not doing Sanders a favor.

“We made a decision that we thought was best for the team,” he said. “We’re really happy to have Shedeur as part of the program. As I mentioned earlier, there’s no way that we thought that he would be available at that point.”

One thing the Browns do not have to figure out is Sanders’ marketability. That’s a commodity he’s possessed since college with high-profile stops at Jackson State and Colorado.

His problem is that his high profile created expectations that outkicked the coverage. There were expectations that he would be a first- or second-round selection. Sanders played terribly last Saturday. He took five sacks, lost 41 yards and looked every bit of a fifth-round pick.

There was a painful coda to a painful performance after the Rams took the lead and Shedeur petitioned head coach Kevin Stefanski to let him go in to lead the Browns on a two-minute drive. He was clearly hoping to lead the Browns on a final heroic go-ahead score and a redemptive come-from-behind victory. Sanders received an answer he probably had not heard in the past six years:

No.

Flacco put the rookie’s disappointing afternoon in perspective.

“You know, you’re going to get thrown into situations that you know maybe you don’t think are ideal,” he said.

Flacco recalled a game against New England his rookie season in 2008 when he was put in a game with two minutes left. He fumbled on the 1-yard line and the opponent recovered.

“They scored two plays later, and that was [Baltimore Ravens head coach] John Harbaugh’s first preseason game, and he was not happy. I mean, I wasn’t happy either, but like, hey, like, it’s part of the game. Part of what makes a football player is learning how to deal with those situations and learning from them. So, yeah, listen, we’ve all been there. It’s part of the game.”

Yet, the passion for Sanders among supporters persists.

Even after Sanders’ miserable performance on Saturday, accusations were flying across social media: The Browns sabotaged Sanders, set him up by playing him with third and fourth stringers (albeit against third and fourth stringers).

Titannia Hall and her mother Brenda traveled from Atlanta to watch Sanders start on Saturday. As we sat waiting for our respective Ubers, I asked Titannia what she thought about Sanders in general and his performance in particular. “He was not given a fair opportunity,” she said.  

Titannia, a nurse’s assistant, remembers watching Deion Sanders when he had his own TV show in Atlanta. She watched the Sanders children grow up.

“We’ve been following him since he was in high school. Prime had the TV show and stuff, so we basically saw him grow up on TV,” she said referring to Shedeur. “So, it feels like we know him. He’s our nephew, he’s our cousin, he’s like our brother, and we want him to succeed.”

His drop in the draft stiffened Titannia’s support. “Especially when we saw how far he fell, that makes everybody go even harder now, because it’s like we saw what happened,” she said. “We felt that he was done wrong.”

As teams prepare to trim their rosters, there was speculation that Sanders might not make the roster, even though Berry has hinted that Cleveland will carry four quarterbacks. 

Shedeur will be in that number because he brings value.

Cleveland has not won an NFL championship since 1964 and has never reached the Super Bowl. The Browns have not had a dominant quarterback since Otto Graham, who played for the franchise from 1946 until 1955. The current stable of Browns quarterbacks can best be described as just OK.

Despite being listed fourth on the quarterback depth chart, Sanders has consistently talked about helping turn the Browns around. That kind of optimism should not be ignored, and it isn’t, which is part of the reason that Berry snatched him up. Charisma does not grow on trees.

Sanders represents hope, and — for a franchise like Cleveland — hope is a very wise investment proposition.