The Draw Play

Preseason Week 3 has concluded. Next up: Real Football. But before then, I guess we can take this time to discuss the hot topic du jour. Shedeur Sanders! He gets clicks. He gets clicks from the haters and clicks from the stans. Give me your valuable clicks.

Both Sanders boys had dreadful final weeks of preseason.

Let’s start with Shilo, the “other” Sanders. The one many Shedeur Stans might not even know exists. Shilo was a lesser prospect for this year’s draft. He plays Safety and went undrafted, eventually signing on with the Bucs as a UDFA. As a UDFA you already have a tough road ahead of you and Shilo didn’t stand out much as an on-field product. But in the final game against Buffalo, Bills tight end Zach Davidson gets up in his face while blocking and Shilo throws a punch in retaliation. Frankly, I find it hard to even blame Shilo for it. Davidson absolutely instigated it, kept blocking well after the play was over, and even grabbed Shilo’s facemask. Davidson was a little bitch and I think in a just world he’s the one in trouble. But Shilo, a player already on a very tenuous bubble, did exactly what he can’t do in that situation and retaliate with a punch. You can’t punch a dude, no matter how big a bitch they be. If Shilo had just kept engaged normally or even flopped a bit, Davidson is probably flagged (The ref appears to be ready to throw his flag before the punch) and Shilo draws an important penalty. Shilo was ejected, and soon afterward he was cut. Where he ends up is now up in the air.

Shedeur also had a terrible week, putting up maybe one of the worst preseason performances of the year. He got sacked 5 times on 9 dropbacks, one being an atrocious 24 yard sack where Shedeur clearly underestimates his opponents and tries to hero ball and eats shit. His play was so bad he got benched, in a preseason game, for guaranteed future cut Snoop Huntley in the final 2 minutes. It was the game the haters had been waiting for, and Sanders was ripped to shreds on every platform. The game showcased his flaws (sacks are often on the QB as much as the o-line, and you can’t just blame the O-line for his failures when he showed the same hero ball problems in Colorado). His entire preseason showed him holding onto the ball too long and not processing the field fast enough, his biggest knock during the draft process by anyone who actually watched the film. But I honestly came away from the game mostly just feeling bad for the kid again.

Shedeur is trapped in the vicious dimension of unproven football celebrity. He has legions of stans who would throw themselves in front of a bison for him no matter how badly he plays or how stupid he acts, and he has an even larger legion of haters who are directly aiming the bison stampede in his direction at all times. It’s Tebow all over again. The football barely matters. If he does well the haters don’t care and hate. If he does poorly the stans don’t care and still stan. No matter what he does, it’s a firestorm. Earlier in the month a viral clip emerged of Shedeur denying an autograph to a fan before a game, with his explanation being “I’m about to play a game. It’s not a great look to be signing stuff”. He actually got hate for this.

Do I think he could have just given his autograph? Yeah. I also think it would have resulted in him getting less shit. But he’s not wrong. If he signed autographs before a game, the legion of true haters would absolutely have said exactly what Shedeur was worried about. The main MO of being a hater is to read every action and word in bad faith and build a narrative out of it. This was just a contribution to the arrogance to them. After his final preseason game he gave what felt like (to me) a tongue in cheek reaction to his struggles (god help him if he genuinely thought he played alright). People did exactly what you’d expect with that comment. Celebrities are frequently privileged, arrogant people but I have a level of empathy for how stuck they can be in this hole where every action and word can be ripped out of context and used against them.

I had high hopes that the Browns would actually be a great spot for Shedeur to prove his draft fall was a mistake. If his preseason did anything it was confirm his slide was warranted. He acquitted himself well enough in the first two games, keeping the haters at a comfortable distance, but he didn’t excel, and his tsar bomba of a final game solidified that Gabriel is probably still the better backup. The Browns will probably keep all 4 QBs on the roster and the noise demanding Shedeur start will be horrific if Flacco gets hurt. It’ll be a chorus from the types of people who started to genuinely argue the Browns players and coaches purposefully played bad to make Shedeur look bad. EDIT: As I type this, the Browns shipped Kenny Pickett to the Raiders, so Shedeur’s job is safe and he’s that much closer to actually playing a game. Get ready for noise at the first bad Joe Flacco pass. Gabriel is going to be the first one in (barring injury) and oh boy is it going to be a shitshow online.

Before I go, congrats to Deion for beating bladder cancer. I’ve always been a Deion hater, but the world is better with him in it, and I’m genuinely glad he’s still with us. Fuck cancer. Also fuck his bladder cancer because if the timeline adds up, his personal struggle over the past year may have been the main reason he wasn’t hired to be the Cowboys coach, and I am furious we were robbed of that clownshow.