on \u201cThe Barbershop\u201d podcast Thursday<\/a>. \u201cThat wasn\u2019t asked of me a year ago. I don\u2019t understand it. Even a guy like Travis Hunter being drafted to Jacksonville, and I\u2019ve had him for the last three (years), don\u2019t you think you would want to talk to me to ask me what gets him going and what backs him off? You would want to know that.<\/p>\n\u201cSo, I anticipate, and I can\u2019t wait to have that conversation with coach Monken.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Browns and then-coach Kevin Stefanski selected Shedeur Sanders in the fifth round after a shocking drop that became one of the biggest storylines of the 2025 NFL Draft. Sanders was viewed as one of the top quarterback prospects in the class, but was the sixth quarterback drafted. The Browns also drafted Oregon quarterback Dillon Gabriel 50 picks before Sanders.<\/p>\n
Sanders entered camp as one of four quarterbacks on the roster. After the Browns traded starter Joe Flacco and Gabriel suffered a concussion, Sanders debuted in Week 11 and started the season\u2019s final seven games. The Browns went 3-4 in that stretch, finished 5-12 and fired Stefanski after the season.<\/p>\n
Sanders completed 120 of 212 passes (56.6 percent) for 1,400 yards, seven touchdowns and 10 interceptions. He was also sacked 23 times.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen he takes off his shirt, I see the scars on his back that he\u2019s been through hell, but he\u2019s made it through hell,\u201d Deion Sanders said in the interview. \u201cHe kept going, and he matured, not like he was a child, but he matured spiritually.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sanders also took issue with some reporting around his son\u2019s predraft process, which some cited as a reason for his draft weekend drop.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was some ignorant things (that) came out about him pre-draft and all that, and that was a lie,\u201d Deion Sanders said. \u201cLike, he would never go into a meeting with headphones on. He would never go into a meeting unprepared. Like, that\u2019s just not who he is. There\u2019s no way he could accomplish the things he accomplished without being prepared.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shedeur Sanders spoke repeatedly last season about feeling like he didn\u2019t get proper chances to prove himself and was struggling to deal with his place on the depth chart, which, for the first half of last offseason, was at the bottom.<\/p>\n
When Sanders made his NFL debut last November in the second half of a Browns loss to the Baltimore Ravens, he had yet to take a single practice snap with any of the Browns\u2019 starters. Cleveland traded Flacco early last October, and though that move bumped Sanders to the role of primary backup, he still got live reps only in post-practice opportunity periods.<\/p>\n
After Sanders started the Browns\u2019 preseason opener because of a rash of injuries across the quarterback depth chart, he suffered an oblique strain and failed to build on any momentum he might have created. He missed the following week and two joint practice sessions, and when he played against the Los Angeles Rams\u2019 third and fourth-stringers in the Browns\u2019 preseason finale, he took five sacks and failed to move the offense.<\/p>\n
The 2025 Browns appeared to be making up their quarterback plans on the fly, and a miserable season ended with Stefanski getting fired and the offense again finishing at the bottom of the league in multiple major categories. Still, Sanders was drafted only after the team had selected the rookie signal caller it intended to pick. Even as the Browns moved on from their two veteran quarterbacks, they still chose the third-rounder Gabriel over Sanders.<\/p>\n
If Sanders went \u201cthrough hell\u201d because he thought he should have been playing, that\u2019s his feeling, but the whole thought that Stefanski held a personal grudge or that Sanders should have been playing early last season continues to come off as ridiculous. He was a fifth-round pick, was fourth in line for his first four months as a pro and then flopped in his final preseason opportunity.<\/p>\n
The early impression this offseason is that Monken and Sanders have developed a relationship.<\/p>\n
The Browns\u2019 social media accounts shared pictures and video of Monken and Sanders in Monken\u2019s office on one of the coach\u2019s first days. Sanders gifted Monken a porcelain horse head for Monken\u2019s birthday, and during last month\u2019s voluntary minicamp, Sanders spoke glowingly of his new coach.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Coach (Monken) just spoke life into me,\u201d Sanders said. \u201cAnd then, like when you do that, you just get the best result for me. Honestly, that\u2019s what you get.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was here one day and (Monken) was like, \u2018Well, if you want to be the best quarterback you want to be, then you got to do that on a daily regimen, daily time.\u2019 So that\u2019s what clicked for me. And then I was like, \u2018OK, I need to improve this area.\u2019 And it\u2019s just one step at a time. You got to do this, you got to do this. You keep adding things as you start getting momentum and everything.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, I think it\u2019s just having coach just talking to you. I think that\u2019s it. Just a relationship. I\u2019m a relationship-based person, so I take relationships extremely serious.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Colorado coach Deion Sanders says he plans to meet with new Cleveland Browns coach Todd Monken to discuss…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":798649,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[1544,1428,1318,1317,1315,1316,1232,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-798648","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-cleveland-browns","9":"tag-college-football","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-football","13":"tag-ncaafootball","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/798649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}