Player availability · Transcript archive · Unedited
The Browns have made Sanders available to reporters eleven times since the end of the draft. Three of those are reproduced below in the order they happened, from the team’s own transcript archive: the first one after the draft, the second day of mandatory minicamp, and last Wednesday at camp.
Questions are unattributed, which is how the team publishes them. Nothing has been cut except a stretch of crosstalk at the front of the June session where four people asked at once.
The national crew had driven up from the draft and set up early. Sanders walked out of the meeting rooms in a gray team shirt with his phone in his left hand and held it the entire time. He stood against the wall rather than in front of the backdrop the team had put up, and nobody moved him.
First time we’ve had you in here since the season ended in January. What has it been like in there with everybody new?
Sanders: It’s been good. It’s a lot of new people, so you’re introducing yourself twenty times a day. New strength staff, new trainers, new coaches, new people at the front desk. Right now I’m mostly trying to learn everybody’s name and be where I’m supposed to be when I’m supposed to be there. That’s really it so far.
You’ve had a couple months with the new head coach now. What have those conversations been like?
Sanders: He’s been great to me. Truly. He’ll sit there and explain why something is the way it is instead of just telling you do it, and I like that, because then I can go use it on the field instead of just repeating it back to him. I’m 24. I got a lot to learn about being a pro still. Anybody want to teach me something, I’m taking it.
The team drafted another quarterback on Saturday, in the sixth round. Any reaction to that when you saw it?
Sanders: That’s their job. They’re going to bring in who they bring in and that’s not for me to have a opinion on. Taylen called me that night before I even knew. He seem like a good dude. I’ll help him with whatever he need, same way guys did for me last year when I didn’t know nothing.
Do you look at yourself as the starter going into this season?
Sanders: I’m not putting a timeline on none of that. That’s Coach’s call, that’s the staff’s call, they’re going to do what they think is right for the team. Whenever they need me, I’ll be ready.
I already know what I am. Whenever they say it, they say it.
Your father was in Cleveland over the weekend. Was he in the building at all during the draft?
Sanders: He came through Friday for a couple hours. He talked to Coach, he talked to some of the staff, he was gone. He don’t hang around. He was more hyped about the receiver they took than anything else that happened that whole weekend.
How much of the new offense have you seen at this point in the spring?
Sanders: We’re not on the field with it yet, it’s meetings and walkthroughs. They put it on the iPads in March. It’s a whole lot of formations, more than I’ve ever had, but the way they teach it is the same rules over and over, so I think it’s less than it looks like from outside. I’m not about to sit up here in April and act like I got it, though. I don’t got it.
Has the ownership change altered anything day to day for you guys?
Sanders: Not really. They redid the cafeteria. There’s a new logo on the wall in the weight room. Everybody keeps asking me that one and I don’t got a good answer for it, I’m sorry.
Are you excited for the season?
Sanders: Yeah. Of course I am. It’s a long way from here to September, though. We got OTAs, we got minicamp, we got camp, all of it in front of us. I’m just doing this part right now.
He was asked about the quarterback room twice more in different words and did not add anything to it. A team staffer ended it at nine minutes and he stayed another minute talking to two people about the draft.
He came out with a towel over one shoulder and did not sit down. Mansour had said that morning that the reps would stay split into training camp and had declined, again, to put a date on a decision. Sanders had taken the second rotation with the first unit for the third practice in a row.
Coach said this morning the reps stay the way they are into camp. Did you know that before he said it?
Sanders: I heard it when y’all heard it. I mean, we talk all the time, so it’s not like it caught me off guard. But that specific thing, this morning, no. I heard it out there same as everybody.
Is that frustrating?
Sanders: I’m not going to say frustrating. That’s your word.
What I’ll tell you is I be in that building at six in the morning and I be one of the last ones out of there, and that’s been since March, that ain’t a minicamp thing I started doing because y’all showed up. So if you’re asking do I want it, yeah. Everybody in that room want it. I’m not at peace with waiting. I’m not built like that and I’m not going to act like I am for you.
Have they told you specifically what it is they want to see from you before they decide?
Sanders: Yeah, they have. They been clear with me the whole way. I’m not going to put that out here, though. That’s between me and them.
Can you say whether it’s mechanical or whether it’s the operation?
Sanders: It’s football. That’s what I got for you on that one.
There’s a feeling outside this building that this is taking as long as it’s taking because of who you are. Does any of that get to you?
Sanders: I hear everything. My phone works.
But people been talking about me since I was fifteen years old, so that part don’t move me the way it used to. The thing I go back to is last year. Last year I got hit a whole lot, everybody saw how that went, and I never one time came out of a game. Not one. Y’all can go look it up, it’s in the book. So whatever it is they need to see, whether I can stand in there and take it is not on the list. That’s the one thing I never have to sit and think about. So whatever they —
(Jared Verse came around the corner of the fieldhouse behind the group with his helmet in one hand and said something to him that the microphones did not pick up.)
Sanders, to Verse: Boy, get out my shot. I’m gon’ see you at lunch.
(To the group.) My bad. What was you asking me?
Whether you think you’ve done enough to have the job.
Sanders: Yeah. I do. I think I’ve done enough. I’m not going to stand out here campaigning for it, that’s corny, and it don’t work anyway. But you asked me straight so I’ma answer you straight. Yeah, I think it should be mine. Coach knows I think that, I’ve told him I think that, so it ain’t news to nobody in there. Put whatever you want on that one.
Do you and the head coach talk about the competition directly, you and him?
Sanders: Every week. He tells me the truth even when it’s not what I want. I don’t got no problem with him at all.
Your father was on his show last week talking about the rotation. Does that come up between you?
Sanders: That’s my pops. He’s going to say what he feels, he’s been doing that since before I was born.
He came here in the spring and sat with Coach a long time and came out of there respecting the man, so that’s where I leave it. Me and him mostly talk about stuff that ain’t football.
Last one. Physically, how do you feel coming out of the spring?
Sanders: I’m good. Arm’s good, legs are good.
He said he had to lift, said appreciate y’all, and went back inside. Six minutes. Gabriel spoke for four minutes after him and Green for two.
This is the largest group that has stood in front of any player in this building this summer, and it has been the largest group every week since camp opened. Two of the cameras belong to national shows that are in town for three days. He was dressed before he got to the group and answered for eleven minutes, which was four minutes longer than the head coach spoke that morning.
Four weeks out from Jacksonville now. Where do you feel like you are with all of it?
Sanders: I feel good. Best I’ve felt since I got here. The offense makes sense to me now in a way it did not make sense in the spring, so that’s the difference.
In what way didn’t it make sense?
Sanders: Okay, so. When they first handed it to us, it’s all these personnel groupings and it looked like twelve different offenses to me, right, and I’m sitting in there in April trying to memorize twelve offenses. That’s not what it is. It’s the same read off the same rules and they just keep changing what it looks like for the other side. So the corner is seeing something brand new and I’m doing the exact same thing I did on the play before. Once that clicked — and it clicked in like the second week of July, it took me that long — I stopped studying formations and started studying what my eyes are supposed to do on each one. That’s the whole offense. Coach says a version of that in the meeting every single day and it took me till July to hear it, so that part’s on me, but I hear it now.
The three procedural penalties in the two-minute period a couple weeks back. What happened there?
Sanders: That’s me. All three was me. Two of them I had the clock wrong in my head and one was I let the huddle break slow with the sub coming on. That’s the quarterback, that’s nobody else on that field. It hasn’t happened since and it’s not going to happen again.
Did the coaches bring that up with you afterward, or did it get left alone?
Sanders: I brought it up. That night.
(He looked past the group at Tony Grossi, the ESPN Cleveland analyst, who had come over from the other side of the room.)
Sanders: Tony. I be hoping you got something positive to say about me. You always say negative things about me.
What I do? What I do to you, Tony?
(He broke out laughing. Grossi said something about the two-minute period. Sanders pointed at him.)
Sanders: See? Right there. That’s what I’m talking about. Every time.
Dillon had a good day out there in the team stuff today.
Sanders: He’s been good all camp. He’s been better than good. That room is competitive but it ain’t ugly in there, it’s not like people think it is.
Do you feel you’ve been treated fairly in this competition?
Sanders: Yeah. That’s not something I think about no more.
You play for a head coach who said what he said in January about Deshaun Watson. Have you and he ever talked about that?
Sanders: No. Me and him talk about football.
I never knew the man, I wasn’t here for none of it, and it’s not my place to be speaking on it either way. That’s not me ducking you, I just don’t have nothing to say about it. Y’all can ask me in October, it’s going to be the same.
There’s an argument out there that your head coach isn’t equipped to judge a quarterback. Does that ever reach the quarterback room?
Sanders: Man. Y’all been asking me a version of that since April.
He was making videos, I know, everybody knows, it’s all still up there, y’all play the clips on the radio. Here’s what I know. He watched every throw I made in college with the sound off and then asked me about a third down against Nebraska I had forgot I played. He tells me exactly what he wants and why he wants it, and when I do it wrong he tells me that too, that day, to my face, and he’s right about it. So whatever people think he can and can’t see — he sees it. That’s all I got on that.
Have you gone in and asked him straight out where you stand right now?
Sanders: Nah. He’ll tell me.
If this goes to the last week of the preseason, is that a problem?
Sanders: It’s not up to me. However they want to do it, I’ll find out when y’all find out.
If I take the first snap in Jacksonville, cool. If I’m holding a chart, then I’m holding a chart and I’ma be the loudest one on that sideline doing it. I’ll be ready in October either way.
Anything you want to say to the people who have been waiting on an answer all summer?
Sanders: Nah, I’m good. I’ll see y’all Friday.
Three reporters stayed after the group broke up. He answered two more questions about the run game, asked one of them how his son was doing, and went back to his locker.
