‘I Saw Flashes of Vintage Colorado Shedeur Sanders Against the Ravens’: Skip Bayless

Since taking over for Joe Flacco, rookie third-round pick Dillon Gabriel hasn’t exactly been impressive as the QB of the Cleveland Browns. He was 1-4 as a starter coming in, and his bland, boring style of play had many calling for Shedeur Sanders to get his shot. Well, after Gabriel was ruled out with a concussion at halftime of Cleveland’s Week 11 matchup with the Ravens, that’s exactly what happened. And it was ugly.

Sanders got a full half of football in a competitive game against a division rival in the Baltimore Ravens. Cleveland was up 16-10, too. But looking at the raw numbers strictly, it doesn’t look like he really grabbed that opportunity with two hands, or even one. He finished the game 4-for-16 for 47 yards and an interception, rushed three times for 16 yards, and was sacked twice.

Sanders led six drives. The Browns earned a first down on just two of them, with four ending in punts, one in that interception, and one (the final one) on downs as Cleveland tried to drive down and tie the game late. They ultimately lost 23-16. But that last drive is where some of Sanders’ supporters, such as Skip Bayless, saw a few flashes of what Bayless called “vintage” Shedeur.

“Shedeur got his shot. And I saw flashes of vintage, Colorado, Jackson State, Shedeur Sanders… In that last-ditch drive, I saw flashes of Shedeur’s ‘IT’ factor. Right away, he goes 25 yards to that kid Harold Fannin Jr. … It just took my breath away. Because you saw arm strength, you saw conviction, you saw authority on the throw that I have not seen from Dillon Gabriel,” Bayless said in a video posted on X.

The analyst believes that the Browns were playing “not to lose” with Gabriel, who he says is a dink-and-dunk connoisseur. Sanders, meanwhile, has “underrated” mobility, according to Bayless, which the fifth-round rookie QB showed on a couple of scrambles in this game.

It sure seems the former FS1 pundit has a soft spot for Sanders:

“I believe in this kid with all my heart and soul. I believe in his poise, I believe in his accuracy, I believe in his makeup, I believe in his toughness. I just believe in his ‘IT’ factor for playing the hardest position there is to play in sports… But you won’t see the position get any harder than with him getting thrown into the fire with Dillon Gabriel’s game plan against the Baltimore defense when they are desperate to pull out a win on the road.”

We would agree that there were some flashes from Sanders, but saying he looked like “vintage” Sanders when he’s just 23 years old was pretty funny.

Overall, the Browns ran a lot of rollouts for Sanders with a mixed bag of results. However, he was also pressured or knocked down on what seemed like more than half of his dropbacks. He had a nice scramble to convert a 3rd-and-3 at one point, but he also took two bad sacks that lost a total of 27 yards. Those are real drive killers.

But Sanders did look solid on that final drive. He drove the ball downfield to Fannin to get them rolling and then converted another third down to Jerry Jeudy shortly after. He even threw a lovely back shoulder throw to Gage Lavardin in the end zone on the final third down that really should have been caught.

If that throw to Lavardin had been caught to tie the game, we’d be having different conversations on Monday morning. But it wasn’t. Now we have to decipher the good and the bad from a tough debut in a tough situation (being thrown into the game midway through).

The QB decision for head coach Kevin Stefanski for Week 12 will no doubt be one of the more intriguing storylines of the week. Stay tuned, Cleveland.