Browns Legend Speaks Out With Bold Shedeur Sanders Opinion

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Evan Massey is a sports reporter and analyst located in Indianapolis, Indiana who covers the NFL, NBA, MLB, WNBA, and college sports. He has been featured on many publications, including Athlon Sports, ESPN, Yahoo! Sports, Forbes, Bleacher Report, Sporting News, and many others. In his free time, Evan enjoys spending time with his wife and son.

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Shedeur Sanders will begin the 2025 NFL season as the No. 3 quarterback for the Cleveland Browns. He will start off the year behind with Joe Flacco and Dillon Gabriel.

While that’s not where he wanted to be in Week 1, he made the 53-man roster. He was able to make the team, while the Browns decided to part ways with Kenny Pickett via a trade to the Las Vegas Raiders.

Making the team was the first step. Sanders may not be in line to get on the field early in the season, but he can begin working towards that goal now.

Plenty of opinions have been shared about Sanders. Some of them have been about Sanders being ready to play and how the team is holding him back. Others have been about Sanders being talented but needing to put more work in before becoming an NFL starter.

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Recently, a Cleveland legend spoke out with a bold opinion on the matter. As shared by Fox News, Joe Thomas shard a strong take about Sanders.

“I think he has a higher ceiling. He’s a great playmaker, he has tremendous accuracy, he has that feel when he is in the game of how to make those big plays,” Thomas said. “But just because you have that ceiling that’s really high and that potential to be able to do that doesn’t mean you can do it right now. I think the reason Shedeur fell to the fifth round is because they feel like he’s got a lot of development that he still needs to do before he can be an NFL starting quarterback.”

Sanders falling to the fifth round of the 2025 NFL Draft was a massive surprise. He had been projected to be a first or possibly second-round pick leading up to the slide.

Even though he suffered through one of the worst draft slides in recent history, the young quarterback kept his composure. He had no signs of resentment or anger. In fact, all he had to say was how thankful he was to be given the opportunity with the Browns.

Read more: Bears’ Caleb Williams Delivers Strong Words on Painting Fingernails

He has work to do on the field, but there are a lot of reasons to be optimistic. Sanders has already shown some flashes on the field, but the way he has carried himself off the gridiron has been even more impressive.

It will be interesting to see what the future has in store for Sanders, but that future still does look very bright even though he’s the No. 3 quarterback on the roster for Week 1.

For more on the Cleveland Browns and general NFL news, head over to Newsweek Sports.