The Cleveland Browns best quarterback over the course of OTAs and mandatory minicamp has been rookie Shedeur Sanders. Despite performing the best out of the four quarterbacks, he is still listed fourth on the Browns quarterback depth chart.
Kenny Pickett, Joe Flacco, and rookie Dillon Gabriel are all ahead of him on the depth chart for now, but a lot of things can change between now and Week 1 of the 2025 NFL season. Sanders is going to be someone to watch out for during training camp and preseason games. Is there a chance that he could be starting for Week 1 for Cleveland against the Cincinnati Bengals?
NFL Analyst Thinks Cleveland Browns Rookie Quarterback Shedeur Sanders Can Start Week 1
Charles Robinson of yahoo sports thinks that there is a path for Sanders to be the Week 1 starting quarterback for the Browns. Everyone knows that he has performed the best for Cleveland in the quarterback room so far this season.
One of the things that Robinson mentioned was that first and foremost, Sanders has to master the scheme, the verbiage and the terminology. Robinson said,
“Physically, Sanders can start in the NFL right now. Despite all the talk about Colorado Buffaloes offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur utilizing a pro-style scheme that supposedly made Sanders more “pro ready” than some other quarterbacks, I don’t think that has proven to be the case. Not only is Sanders going to be mentally swimming with the complexity of an NFL offense, there is a lot of work to do with the basic terminology and verbiage utilized by Stefanski’s scheme.
In short, I don’t believe Shurmur’s Colorado offense had as much NFL overlap in either of those departments, which means that Sanders is going to have to learn from the ground up when it comes to something as simple as being able to memorize and spit out all the verbiage of an NFL play inside the huddle.
That’s hardly an unusual problem when it comes to rookie quarterbacks. But it’s a much bigger challenge when you weren’t really operating a complex offense in college or calling complicated plays or protections in a manner that had a lot of NFL overlap. Sanders has to learn the Browns’ offense and then learn how to speak it — and quickly — so that he can get to the line of scrimmage and make his pre-snap reads.”
The preseason games are going to tell if Sanders will be ready to be the Week 1 starter for the Browns or not. There is no doubt that his viral videos of him throwing touchdown passes deep and in the red zone have looked good. However, it is still a mystery as to why he slipped all the way to the fifth round in the 2025 NFL Draft.
There will be some pivotal decisions that head coach Kevin Stefanski and general manager Andrew Berry will have to make with the quarterback room before the 2025 NFL season. It would be a major shock if Sanders doesn’t at least make the roster. However, it would be a surprise to see Sanders be the Week 1 starter for this football team.
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