We should all be embarrassed by the Shedeur Sanders coverage

Entering the 2025 NFL Draft, I knew Shedeur Sanders was famous.

Admittedly, I didn’t realize he was this famous.

Sure, there’s always going to be a certain level of attention focused on the top quarterbacks in any given class, especially when one happens to be the son of one of the most decorated football players in history. But at some point during Sanders’ slide from projected first-round pick to fifth-round selection, I realized that this wasn’t just another Aaron Rodgers-esque draft day tumble. This was something much more akin to the circuses that surrounded Tim Tebow and Johnny Manziel, despite Sanders never possessing the same level of celebrity as a college star.

Unlike all of those aforementioned quarterbacks, Sanders’ skid didn’t stop in the mid-20s; it lasted all the way until the Cleveland Browns took him with the No. 144 pick. And yet, the further he fell, the more famous he became. Conspiracy theories emerged. The President of the United States weighed in. Mel Kiper Jr. openly moped as Sanders assuredly set a new record for the longest time a prospect has ever sat atop his best players available board.

By the time Sanders arrived in Northeast Ohio for training camp this summer, he wasn’t just one of the most famous players on the Browns’ roster, but one of the most famous in the NFL. Nevertheless, he remained QB4 on Cleveland’s quarterback depth chart heading into a season in which the Browns possess the NFL’s lowest projected win total according to oddsmakers.

But lest you thought that sitting behind Joe Flacco, Kenny Pickett, and Dillon Gabriel or Cleveland’s status as one of the league’s least interesting teams would remove Sanders from the spotlight, you haven’t been paying attention. If anything, the cognitive dissonance of one of the NFL’s most famous players being a member of one of its least relevant rosters has only amplified the attention the entire situation has received.

Look no further than the reaction to his lackluster showing in the Browns’ preseason finale on Saturday, in which the 23-year-old quarterback completed three of his six pass attempts for 14 yards while absorbing five sacks. Yet despite Sanders clearly playing poorly — or perhaps how one might expect a fifth-round rookie and fourth-string quarterback to perform — that explanation wouldn’t suffice. Instead, Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski had to defend himself against allegations that he was sabotaging his rookie quarterback as a part of a storyline that inevitably led to Monday’s episode of First Take.

https://t.co/KMhNPgCdV7 pic.twitter.com/FQuGwlLMia

— Ben Axelrod (@BenAxelrod) August 25, 2025

Making matters worse is that this is actually a relatively tame example of the Shedeur Sanders media complex in action. Hell, it might actually be an improvement over reporters and league-affiliated social media accounts posting Gabriel’s quotes about the media out of context, which generates the perception of a feud between the Browns’ rookie quarterbacks in the process.

The same thing happened again on Saturday, as Sanders answered a question about whether he thought he’d make Cleveland’s 53-man roster — a fair question for any fifth-round pick following a shaky showing — by saying “obviously.” Sure, that was only the first word of a relatively boilerplate answer about the type of confidence required to be a part of an NFL locker room. More context, however, typically means fewer likes and retweets.

We really need to stop taking guys out of context for the sake of “engagement”. The Shedeur Sanders one-word quote—“obviously”—went around the internet yesterday, and made him sound cocky and entitled.

There was a lot more to what he actually said. 👇👇 pic.twitter.com/MXvC5EmINF

— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) August 24, 2025

In many ways, it’s the draft all over again.

The further Shedeur Sanders gets away from becoming a starting quarterback, the more his profile grows. Who has time to consider that he was playing with third and fourth-stringers on Saturday, because that’s where he fits on the depth chart when it’s much easier to attach all of this to a larger conspiracy that the NFL wants to put a player in his place.

Sanders wasn’t even the most famous figure in college football last season and was probably a distant third at Colorado behind his dad and Travis Hunter. And yet, here we are with nearly a week to go until the start of the regular season, with the No. 4 quarterback on what will likely be one of the league’s worst teams leading ESPN’s daily news cycle.

How did we even get here?

I keep thinking back to the draft and all of the conspiracies and after-the-fact reporting that emerged during and after his slide. To me, the explanation always seemed like a simple one: Sanders fell out of the first round for football reasons. And he fell to the fifth round because nobody wants their backup quarterback to be a distraction.

Sanders, for his part, has done and said all of the right things publicly, give or take a playful postgame confrontation with ESPN Cleveland’s Tony Grossi following his impressive preseason debut. But it would be tough to argue that the media attention surrounding him hasn’t become a distraction, and it’s fair to wonder whether the Browns were as naïve as I was about his level of fame when they finally took him off the board last spring.

Regardless of how we got here, the reality is that Sanders is now one of those SEO-friendly names who is going to remain a debate show favorite, especially once the Browns’ inevitable stumble to a losing record with any of the other three quarterbacks currently ahead of him on their depth chart. Whether that says more about the people creating the content or the demand driving it is ultimately irrelevant; everybody involved should be embarrassed that not only is the Cleveland Browns’ fourth-string quarterback still attracting this much attention, but also the measures that many are taking to prevent it from fading.