The scoreboard Browns’ Shedeur Sanders won on

CLEVELAND — When I evaluate rookie Shedeur Sanders, I use two scoreboards: One records whether his team wins or loses, and the second records whether Shedeur wins or loses.

On Sunday, there was a third scoreboard: Would Shedeur outplay Cam Ward, the Tennessee Titans’ rookie quarterback?

Ward is not any rookie quarterback. He was the No. 1 overall pick of the NFL draft. In some ways, he was also the catalyst for a legion of Shedeur supporters who felt—still feel—he should have been drafted right after Ward. Instead, he fell to the fifth round in last April’s draft, a fall supporters attributed to Shedeur being the victim of a conspiracy to humble a talented, confident young Black man.

Another school of thought feels that Shedeur was a good, not great, college quarterback who was largely the product of his Pro Football Hall of Fame father’s hype machine.

What’s undeniable — what Shedeur has proven during the course of this season — is that he is a bona fide NFL quarterback who can help the Cleveland Browns become relevant again.

On the big scoreboard, Ward won because the 1-11 Titans upset the 3-9 Cleveland Browns, 31-29.

On the individual scoreboard, Shedeur won. Making only his third NFL start, Shedeur played the best game of his NFL career. He attempted 42 passes, completed 23 and threw three touchdowns, including a 60-yard pass to Jerry Jeudy. The Browns’ four longest offensive plays of the season have happened with Shedeur at quarterback.

Each quarterback has a compelling story. Ward was the overlooked high school prospect who played for a low-profile Texas high school team. In college, he played at Incarnate Word, an FCS program, transferred to Washington State, and finally to Miami, where he achieved notoriety and worked his way into becoming a No. 1 overall pick.

What about the all-important third scoreboard: Ward vs. Shedeur. Call it a draw that gives both franchises hope for the future.

Shedeur rode the coattails of his father, Deion Sanders — first at Jackson State, where he helped renovate that HBCU program, then at the University of Colorado, where he and Travis Hunter resuscitated Colorado’s moribund program.

Shedeur’s notoriety did not translate into him becoming a high pick in the NFL draft.

At the beginning of the season, it seemed unlikely that Ward and Sanders would meet in any kind of showdown.

Ward was declared the Tennessee starter from the beginning of the season. Shedeur began as the Browns’ fourth-string quarterback, and eventually climbed to No. 3 when Cleveland traded Kenny Pickett to Las Vegas. He then rose to No. 2 behind rookie Dillon Gabriel when the Browns traded Joe Flacco to Cincinnati. He got a chance to play when Gabriel was put in concussion protocol. Shedeur earned his first start against the Raiders and played well enough to earn a start against San Francisco. So, Sunday he was a starter against his friend and rival, Ward.

For nearly three quarters on Sunday, Shedeur outplayed Ward.

After one quarter, Shedeur had a quarterback rating of 116.7 to Ward’s 78.3. By the half, Sanders’ rating was 147.3 to Ward’s 66.

Beyond the numbers, Shedeur displayed the versatility and a Houdini-like ability to escape that made him the Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year while at Colorado. He threw a well-placed touchdown pass to David Njoku, then connected on a 60-yard pass to Jeudy, the wide receiver with whom he had a highly publicized sideline disagreement last week in a game against San Francisco. Sanders was surging with a sense of confidence that seemed to grow with each successive series.

Ward, who entered Sunday’s game as the NFL’s most sacked quarterback, played a restrained, conservative game, a far cry from the improvisational gunslinger he was at Miami. He was solid.

Ward led the Titans to a touchdown on the opening drive, their first opening-drive touchdown all season.

But the first three and a half quarters of Sunday’s game belonged to Shedeur.

Then he made a mistake. He relapsed into the I’ve-got-to-save-the-world mentality that had been a super power and an Achilles heel throughout his college career. It’s a habit and a signature he struggles to corral. Facing second down and 20 yards to go in the third quarter, with Cleveland leading 17-14, Shedeur scrambled, managed to avoid a ferocious rush, then threw a wild pass into traffic. It was intercepted. Tennessee scored two plays later and never trailed again.

After the game, Shedeur explained that he felt the offense was stagnant.

“I’m trying to get a spark, so that’s all it is,” he said. “As the game goes on, as time goes on – and I know my dad is mad at me for that, for sure. I know the team, everybody is. But I would say, as time goes on, those decisions and those things will slim down, and we won’t be in situations where you have that feeling, like, I got to make something happen.”

In the fourth quarter, Sanders scored on another sensational scramble when he made defenders miss, slithered and scored on a 7-yard run that gave fans a glimpse of what life could be with Shedeur at quarterback.

“Young players learn from every turn that’s out there. There’s some great stuff that you can coach off of,” Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski said.

“I thought some of his pocket movement was outstanding – some really, really good throws, especially late in the drive. I thought he was really good there, but always going to learn from our mistakes.”

Let’s be clear: Shedeur’s best starts have come against bad teams: two weeks ago in Las Vegas in a win against the hapless Raiders, and Sunday against the equally hapless Titans in a losing effort.

He struggled against San Francisco and will face a gauntlet in the next three weeks – Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Chicago—that may not only determine his status for next season but determine whether he’ll be playing for a new head coach.

After Sunday’s game, I asked Ward and Sanders what they hoped to achieve in the final weeks of their respective rookie seasons. Ward said he wanted to get back to being himself.

“As a team, we want to accomplish finishing every game this season with a win. That’s the biggest goal that we have in mind,” he said. “Personally, playing my way of football, the way I know how to play football, the way I played my whole life, and then continue just being a gunslinger – don’t let one bad play turn to the next play. You’ve got to be able to live with the good. Got to critique the good. But you’ve also got to critique the bad.”

Shedeur said he wanted to be a better communicator with teammates.

“I feel like this week we have improved sideline communication,” he said. “Just keeping everybody chill, keeping everybody under one tent, basically communicating with everybody, just checking everybody’s temperature, how everybody’s feeling.”

On the field, he said he needs to improve his vision.

“Being able to anticipate a little bit more, being able to see throws I missed, how to get in that rhythm early on,” he said.

Sunday’s matchup between Ward and Sanders was cast as a morality play, which would either prove that Shedeur should have been drafted higher or confirm why Ward was drafted No. 1 overall.

The premise was ridiculous, of course. The reality is that we won’t know about Ward and Sanders for at least three seasons. Will they be stars in the league? Consistent starters? Growth requires patience, and Shedeur admitted that patience is not a commodity he has in abundance.

“I don’t view things as like patience,” he told reporters before Sunday’s game. “I guess that’s the outside world. That’s nothing I live in within my world. I think I’m more determined and focused on knowing I gotta do what it takes to get the results for the team, for us, that we need to be successful. So, I think there’s certain things that – certain areas that I need to improve in, quickly. Just because I’m a rookie, that’s not really an excuse out there.”

In fact, the area in which Shedeur has matured most dramatically has been messaging, especially when it comes to his relationship with Stefanski and some of the decisions his coach has made.

After Sunday’s game, Sanders was asked how he felt about the decision to remove him from the game after he had electrified the crowd with his 7-yard touchdown run, which pulled the Browns to within 31-29. Instead of showing confidence in the red-hot Shedeur to orchestrate the two-point conversion, Stefanski opted for the Wildcat formation, triggered by rookie running back Quinshon Judkins. The play was bungled and ended with Judkins throwing an incomplete pass to George Larvadain.

Asked about the final play, Sanders said, “I was thankful that we were driving down the field and we scored.”

Asked specifically if he would have liked to have been on the field for the two-point conversion, he said, “If I’m there [on] any play, I wish I would always have the ball in my hand, but that’s not what football is. Sometimes you got to run the ball, sometimes you got to kick a field goal.

“That’s the game. So in any situation, of course, you want to [be on the field], but I know we practice something, and we execute it in practice, and we just didn’t seem to do it this day. I would never go against what the call was.”

Perfect.

Shedeur was a little less reserved a couple weeks ago before the Browns’ game against Las Vegas, when he was asked what he hoped to show teammates and Browns fans with his performance. He said, “That I’m who they’ve been looking for.”

Is he what the Browns need? That remains to be seen. But given Sanders’ performance on Sunday, the sentiment is more plausible than it was eight months ago.

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