Shedeur Sanders said he is confident he will make the Cleveland Browns’ 53-man roster despite struggling in Saturday’s preseason game, adding that he eventually wants to “be a player to be able to change a franchise.”
Sanders started the second half Saturday against the Los Angeles Rams, completing just 3-of-6 passes for 14 yards. The rookie quarterback was sacked five times and led the Browns to only one first down in his five series under center.
But when asked whether he thinks he’ll make the Browns’ 53-man roster, Sanders was clear in his response: “Obviously.”
“I think, overall as a player, I’ve put in the work,” Sanders said after Saturday’s 19-17 victory. “I feel like everything I do, I try to do it to my best and that’s all I can ask for.
“I feel like everybody feels like they should be on the team. If you ask anybody on the team, would they feel like they belong — they belong in their own eyes. I feel like I do, but I’m my own player. I think about myself in a high regard, of course. It’s not my decision.”
A fifth-round pick in this year’s NFL draft, Sanders has been part of a crowded quarterback room with the Browns, who also have veterans Joe Flacco, Kenny Pickett and Tyler Huntley and fellow rookie Dillon Gabriel on their preseason roster.
The NFL’s deadline for teams to cut down their rosters to 53 players is 4 p.m. ET on Tuesday, but general manager Andrew Berry indicated earlier Saturday that keeping as many as four quarterbacks is “not much of a decision.”
“We have a room that we like all the guys in there,” Berry told NFL Network. “We don’t really see that as a problem. We more see it as an opportunity.”
Sanders was outstanding earlier this month in the preseason opener and was sidelined for the Browns’ second preseason game last weekend because of an oblique injury. The former Colorado star had a much rougher outing Saturday, and was visibly frustrated on the sideline after being replaced late in the fourth quarter by Huntley, who orchestrated Cleveland’s game-winning field goal drive.
“In the heat of the battle, you want to be that alpha,” Sanders said. “You want to be that dog. You want to be out there in that final two-minute drive. So of course, small things, of course frustrate, but that’s what happens when you want to be a player to be able to change a franchise.”
“That’s part of being a rookie,” Flacco added. “You’re going to get thrown into situations that maybe you don’t think are ideal. … It’s part of the game — part of what makes a football player is learning how to deal with those situations and and learning from them. So listen, we’ve all been there. It’s part of the game.”
Sanders thought he was going to have the reins for the final drive after Los Angeles’ Jordan Waters scored on a 2-yard run with 2:08 remaining. But Browns coach Kevin Stefanski told Sanders he was going with Huntley.
“It wasn’t my decision,” Sanders said. “Of course, that’s every quarterback’s dream and that’s what every quarterback thrives for — those moments — so it wasn’t me.
“I was happy that Huntley got in, and he handled his business. If anybody else would do it, it would be him.”
Sanders faced four blitzes, according to NFL Next Gen Stats, and was sacked on three of those plays. Gabriel, meanwhile, faced only one blitz and was was not sacked, completing 11-of-17 passes for 129 yards.
Sanders said one of the reasons he took so many sacks is he wanted “to get a spark in the offense” and “make big plays.”
“You just want to make a spark,” he said. “You just want to make something happen, and it’s good and it’s bad. If one of those (sacks) ended up the other way and we score, nobody would say anything negative about it.”
While Stefanski wasn’t happy with Sanders’ play — including taking a 24-yard sack early in the fourth quarter when he kept scrambling backward instead of throwing the ball away — he wasn’t ready to put all the blame on the rookie.
“We didn’t play great as an offense in the second half. That’s never on one person,” Stefanski said. “We can be better in a bunch of areas and just felt like we wanted to give Snoop (Huntley) a last drive.”
The Browns named Flacco their starting quarterback for Week 1 last Monday, and Stefanski declined to name a backup at the time. Cleveland’s latest unofficial depth chart lists Pickett as the backup and Gabriel and Sanders as third- and fourth-string quarterbacks, respectively.
ESPN’s Daniel Oyefusi, ESPN Research and The Associated Press contributed to this report.