Dawgs By Nature
Last year’s training camp for the Cleveland Browns was national news every day. It wasn’t coverage of the latest Super Bowl team or whose tight end was dating a pop star. It was the fact that the team had drafted Shedeur Sanders, who had dropped into the fifth round of the annual college draft.
Early in the pre-draft process, Sanders was projected to become the second overall draft pick. On a sports podcast, his father, Hall of Famer Deion Sanders, predicted his son would be drafted no further than fourth overall.
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And after the long fall to Round 5, everyone wanted to know why he fell and how he would perform in real NFL practices. Sabotage, or the truth? On top of all that, the Browns had already selected another quarterback, Oregon’s Dillon Gabriel, who was hand-picked by then-NFL head coach Kevin Stefanski.
At season’s end, both rookie signal-callers had plenty of starts, yet neither was named to the NFL All-Rookie Team.
Now, it’s Year 2 for Sanders. And as a matter of fact, for Gabriel also, since he remains a roster member. But a new chess piece was revealed when veteran Deshaun Watson showed up to compete for Cleveland’s starting quarterback job.
Currently, the new Browns head coach, Todd Monken, has not announced a starting quarterback. So, the job has an opening, although the application period has closed. Also in the QB room is rookie Taylen Green out of Arkansas.
Four guys. Three with NFL experience. One with multiple Pro Bowl hardware and voted to the NFL All-Rookie Team. Yeah. Say his name.
The Browns remain one of the NFL clubs at the top of the media watch list. With Watson making a return, everyone is reminded of the huge trade that brought him from the Houston Texans to Cleveland. It cost the Browns a multitude of first- and second-round draft picks (and other rounds), which propelled the Texans from cellar dwellers to winning their division twice and into the playoffs the past three seasons. A few fans and the media want to see how this plays out with Watson.
At the same time, after the Watson trade, the Browns plummeted. Without the constant flow of players onto the roster taken in Rounds 1-3, no team can remain competitive.
Can Watson retake the starting QB job?
At the same time, there are two sets of Shedeur Sanders followers.
The first group believes he came from a program that his father coached, which went 4-8-0 and 9-4-0 while Shedeur was the starting quarterback, but never won a conference title, never won a bowl game, had a single All-American, and their only accolade was that WR-DB Travis Hunter took home the Heisman Trophy. In that voting, Shedeur had one first-place vote, seven second-place votes, 30 for third place, and finished #8 out of 10 candidates.
For reference, Gabriel finished third.
This group saw that Shedeur...
