Browns GM Revealed Early Expectations He Gave Shedeur Sanders After Drafting Him

Despite being drafted late, Shedeur Sanders will still have heavy expectations placed on him as an NFL quarterback.
Sanders was drafted by the Browns with the 144th pick in the NFL draft
Sanders was drafted by the Browns with the 144th pick in the NFL draft / Ron Chenoy-Imagn Images
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Shedeur Sanders was finally drafted on the third day of the NFL draft with the 144th pick. The Cleveland Browns negotiated a trade with the Seattle Seahawks to move up into position to select the Colorado quarterback.

The outspoken quarterback, son of Buffaloes head coach Deion Sanders, will be highly scrutinized in the NFL just as he has been at virtually every step of his amateur career. The Cleveland Browns have not necessarily positioned him with an easy path forward, rostering five quarterbacks (once contracts have been inked with their new draftees) ahead of the 2025 season after they also selected Dillon Gabriel in the third round.

Set to manage expectations will be Browns general manager Andrew Berry and head coach Kevin Stefanski. Here's what Berry had to say about the early expectations he laid out for the rookie quarterback:

"Gotta come in, gotta come in to work, and you gotta come in to win. That's the message. Nothing is given," Berry said to the media (H/T Brad Stainbrook).

He later added, "We told him it really doesn't matter where you're picked, it's what you do from that point forward," which sounds like a fairly direct acknowledgement that the Browns passed on Sanders for a different quarterback earlier in the draft that he will now be competing with on the depth chart.

Cleveland's training camp just became one of the most interesting ones to keep an eye on. Sanders seems excited to get going.


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Josh Wilson
JOSH WILSON

Josh Wilson is the news director of the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. Before joining SI in 2024, he worked for FanSided in a variety of roles, most recently as senior managing editor of the brand’s flagship site. He has also served as a general manager of Sportscasting, the sports arm of a start-up sports media company, where he oversaw the site’s editorial and business strategy. Wilson has a bachelor’s degree in mass communications from SUNY Cortland and a master’s in accountancy from the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois. He loves a good nonfiction book and enjoys learning and practicing Polish. Wilson lives in Chicago but was raised in upstate New York. He spent most of his life in the Northeast and briefly lived in Poland, where he ate an unhealthy amount of pastries for six months.