Ever since his infamous slide in the 2025 NFL Draft, fans and analysts alike have been demanding that the league and the Cleveland Browns give Shedeur Sanders the fair shake that he deserves. Mel Kiper famously lashed out during ESPN’s live draft coverage, Skip Bayless has been pleading and begging every week… And now, former New England Patriots DB and two-time Super Bowl champion, Asante Samuel, is advocating for Sanders as well.
Advertisement
“Whatever is going on, it’s not looking good,” Samuel said after it was announced that Bailey Zappe would be elevated from the practice squad. The move came after Sanders sustained his third injury of the season.
Samuel, however, is not willing to believe the injury report blindly. And we can’t blame him for feeling so, going by the precedent set by the Browns while dealing with Sanders.
“You can’t make this sh*t up, man… They are doing everything in their power to stop Shedeur from getting on their field. I’m talking about everything in their power,” said Samuel.
“First, he was dealing with arm soreness, then the oblique injury came out of nowhere. Now he’s talking about tightness in his back? …A tight back is stopping a young rookie athlete from getting on the football field? Just think about that,” he added.
Samuel also suggested that, should Sanders ever go out and seek treatment for his reported back issues, the Browns would then leverage that against him as well. In short, “Stefanski will use that as a reason to say that Shedeur is being held out for cautionary reasons.”
While Samuel’s claims are speculative in nature, it’s not as if the Browns’ front office or coaching staff has necessarily done anything to curtail this public perception. After all, the team’s owner himself, Jimmy Haslam, infamously said during the preseason that he was not particularly fond of the fact that his general manager, Andrew Berry, apparently went rogue and drafted Sanders.
As things stand, the quarterback experiment that Cleveland has been conducting since the offseason seems to be nothing short of an absolute disaster. Their 2-6 regular season record and a litany of complaints and criticisms from both fans and the media highlight how bad it truly has been.
Samuel seems to believe that the Browns’ head coach is now simply preparing for the worst. “Now, I see this was a play just to calm the heat down that’s coming his way from the handling of Shedeur Sanders. Because this is just totally unnecessary,” he said.
“Meanwhile, Dillon Gabriel is looking like cow manure on the football field… It looks like Kevin Stefanski doesn’t even want to make it possible that he has to put Shedeur in the game at any moment at any time,” added Samuel.
If there is any truth to Samuel’s suspicions, then it seems as if things are going to get a lot worse in Cleveland before there’s even a possibility of them getting better.
