Shedeur Sanders got the start with Cleveland's first-team offense against Buffalo, and for a while it looked like the kind of tape that ends a quarterback competition early. He came out and completed his first 8 passes, capping an 11-play, 65-yard drive with a touchdown. Clean pocket, quick decisions, a defense that couldn't get off the field.
Nice drive and all, but the whole "this is Shedeur's audition" rings so hollow to me based on simply who is playing on offense alongside of him right now. #Browns
That skepticism isn't new. Sanders is in the middle of an actual QB competition with Deshaun Watson for the Browns' Week 1 job, and every preseason snap gets treated like courtroom evidence. Fans and even some Browns media have pointed out that whoever's throwing to Cleveland's third- and fourth-string pass catchers in August isn't exactly working with a finished product, which makes it hard to draw hard conclusions from any single series, good or bad.
The bad part of the tape came a little later. Sanders threw a pass slightly behind tight end Jermaine Terry, the ball glanced off Terry's hands, and Bills safety Damar Hamlin was right there to scoop it out of the air. Sanders still finished the day 9-of-11 for 74 yards with the touchdown and the pick, so the box score reads more like a mixed bag than a disaster.
Damar Hamlin hit the Shedeur after picking him off THIS LEAGUE https://t.co/lHgaOvKO4V
None of that stopped the internet from having fun with it anyway, tying Hamlin's celebration style to Sanders' own signature celly regardless of what game the clip actually came from. That's the preseason for you — every rep gets replayed, memed, and argued about long before it means anything for the regular season.
The bigger picture is still the QB battle itself. Sanders is getting extended run with the starters specifically so Kevin Stefanski and the staff can make an honest evaluation against Watson before Week 1, and a drive like this — one clean scoring march undone by one deflected ball — is exactly the kind of noisy data point that competition is going to keep producing. Expect the audition to keep going, and expect every throw, good or bad, to get the same treatment this one just did.