Windy City Gridiron
The Chicago Bears lost in Lambeau last week to the Green Bay Packers, but there is still plenty of room for optimism for this team moving forward this season.
The Bears return home this week to welcome the Cleveland Browns in a game that’s going to be frigid temperatures that will certainly impact how this game is played.
To help preview this matchup, we sat down with Chris Pokorny from Dawgs by Nature (SB Nation’s Cleveland Browns site) to get Cleveland’s perspective on this team and this matchup.
1. We have to start with Shedeur Sanders, don’t we? It’s way too early to make any large proclamations with him, but is there any hope that Sanders could finally be the answer for the Browns at QB?
It’s certainly unfair to Shedeur Sanders that we have to accelerate the evaluation of him in a rather short period of time. On one hand, there has to be a reason that so many teams passed up on him five times before the Browns pulled the trigger in the fifth round, and selecting him came with a media firestorm as well. The Browns stuck to their guns and never gave him reps with the first-team offense throughout camp or the regular season, until it was time to make him the starter a couple of weeks ago. The word in the rumor mill is that the Browns had been happy with the progress Sanders was making throughout the year, but because they didn’t feel he was ready early on, they didn’t want to rush him out there just for the sake of doing so, only to ruin him.
The downside of that is now we’re looking at a scenario where the Browns are likely to have a top draft pick or the ammunition to trade up, and select the quarterback they want in the first round of the 2026 NFL Draft. However, wouldn’t it be nice if we found out that Sanders could be that starting quarterback we need, and then we draft a top wide receiver and offensive lineman instead, which are the team’s two biggest needs outside of quarterback? Through three starts, my biggest gripe with Sanders is that he is still taking too long to process things and get rid of the ball. On the same note, the degree of improvement he has made in such a short period of time is astounding. In my opinion, he looked better than Cam Ward of the Titans last week, and he’s had a whole rookie season as the No. 1 overall pick. Sanders also has a downfield mindset and has been delivering those throws well, which also opens up those shorter checkdown passes that have suddenly been going for sizable gains. His game against the Titans was very good, even with the excusable rookie mistakes involved. That was the type of big leap I needed to see Sanders make in order for my mind to shift from, “Eh, we probably still have to...
