Shedeur Sanders is now 1-1 as a starter after his Cleveland Browns lost 26-8 to the San Francisco 49ers in Week 13. And with head coach Kevin Stefanski keeping the faith in the fifth-round rookie to start in Week 14, there are certainly areas of improvement. Just ask Jay Gruden.
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Two and a half games at the reins of the Browns offense, Sanders hasn’t exactly made himself undroppable. But he hasn’t played poorly enough to warrant a benching either. As a starter, he’s averaging 179.0 passing yards per game on a 60 percent completion percentage, along with a 2-1 TD-INT ratio and a surprisingly solid 90.8 passer rating.
Former NFL head coach Jay Gruden believes it’s still too early to make a declaration on Sanders, but that there are some things he can “fix.”
“The glaring things I see wrong with Shedeur, is his feet in the pocket, are absolutely a train wreck. The reason Jerry Jeudy got mad is not because he overthrew him. He missed him in the first window. He should’ve thrown it sooner. Been ready to throw it. Jerry would have caught it, run out the back door for a touchdown,” Gruden said (via The Arena).
Gruden did add that, despite his somewhat reasonable anger, Jeudy should not have reacted as strongly as he did towards the rookie on the sidelines. And fair enough, as the tablet review looked preety animated.
The former Washington Commanders head coach, with a 35-49-1 all-time record, also pointed out that Sanders’ eyes are not where they should be on most plays.
“His anticipation’s not there. When he’s asked to make a play with a concept—other than the touchdown pass, which was a great throw, great play—he struggles with where his eyes are, where his feet are,” Gruden continued.
“He had a dagger wide open, he threw the checkdown, he had Jerry Jeudy on a sail cut, he went right to the checkdown. So all the reasons you guys hated Dillon Gabriel because he went to the checkdown, we’re seeing the same thing.”
Gabriel seemingly checked it down far more often than even the average rookie QB when he was playing. But is that actually true? Thanks to PFF, we have the tools to check.
Gabriel threw a ton of short passes, Sanders goes deep more than most
From Weeks 5-11, when Gabriel was the starter, 49.3 percent of his passes were thrown short (under 10 yards from the line of scrimmage), seventh-most in the NFL. He was alarmingly inefficient even on those throws, however, completing just 74.0 percent, which ranked 22nd out of 27 qualifying QBs. At 55.2, he has the lowest passing grade on short throws in the NFL despite throwing so many.
A 23.0 percent, Gabriel had the sixth-highest percentage of intermediate throws (10-19 yards downfield) in the NFL during his run as the starter. However, he was once again the lowest-graded passer (54.0) among the group of qualifiers. On deep passes, Gabriel was an NFL-low 1-of-5 for just 22 yards and an INT.
As the starter, Sanders has only thrown the ball short 37.8 percent of the time (29th out of 38), but at 51.8, he has the lowest passer rating in the league in the short areas over the last two weeks. In the intermediate game, Sanders has thrown an NFL-low four passes over the last two games, and his grade (46.1) is fourth-worst.
The deep game is the difference, however. While Gabriel threw just five passes deeper than 20 yards during 5.5 games as the starter, Sanders has thrown seven in just two games. His 15.6 percent deep throw rate is the ninth-highest in the NFL during his time as a starter, his 125 yards on those deep throws is sixth-best, and his 76.7 grade is top 15. Sanders’ 8.0 yards per attempt mark would also rank tied for sixth in the NFL for the season if he had enough attempts to qualify.
Shedeur may be checking down a lot, but that’s because he’s a rookie. His deep ball rate is clearly far higher than Gabriel’s (and most other QBs in the NFL), so Gruden is empirically wrong on the checkdown question. Though the former NFL coach likely has a point when it comes to Sanders’ subpar throwing mechanics.
