Dawgs By Nature
The Cleveland Browns are enjoying their bye week, which provides a respite for players (and fans) to rest and recharge before starting the second half of the 2025 NFL season.
The week off is also an opportunity for the coaching staff to reflect on what went right and wrong during the 2-6 start to the season, and begin a plan to potentially steady the ship, beginning with the first game after the bye week against the New York Jets.
One of the key questions that needs to be addressed focuses on the ongoing situation at quarterback.
Joe Flacco started the first four games and was bad. Then Dillon Gabriel took over, and the past four games have been just as bad.
So what are the coaches to do?
Well, they can always go with the ever-popular “let’s see what we have” plan and turn things over to rookie Shedeur Sanders, who has slowly but steadily been working his way up the depth chart and putting in the extra work that one would expect from a player selected in the fifth round of the NFL Draft.
It has long been expected that Sanders will have his turn at some point this season, but did he let slip the plan this week?
The Colorado Buffaloes, where Sanders starred for the past two seasons, are celebrating their homecoming game this weekend. And with the Browns not having a game, it presents a chance for Sanders to go back for the celebration.
But in a social media post from JaKi, a self-proclaimed “independent CU Buffs creator,” Sanders revealed that he will not be returning to campus, but will be staying in Cleveland as he has to be “big ready” for something:
“I’m not coming to CU homecoming. I can’t make it out there. I wish I could, though. I got treatment out here. I gotta get ready. Big ready.”
Sanders is as media savvy as any player, and he knows that anything he says will be analyzed and magnified into something bigger*. So what exactly is he getting ready for? Let’s run through the possibilities and the likelihood that they are happening.
Following Sunday’s loss to the New England Patriots, head coach Kevin Stefanski said that Gabriel will continue to be the starter after the bye week. But two weeks is a long time between games, and given time to rethink the situation, has Stefanski decided to make the switch to Sanders?
It seems unlikely that Stefanski would have told Sanders to stick around to help him prepare to take over as the starter, given that everyone else is absent from the building. And there is no way a move this big, or at least one that will be perceived as being big, would take place in a way that would allow the news to slip out.
Still, this is the Browns and the quarterback position, so anything is possible. Likelihood: 20 percent.
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