Forty minutes after going 20-of-24 for 275 yards in a 35–7 win in Jacksonville, Shedeur Sanders stood in a service corridor at EverBank Stadium for twelve minutes, brought up the four sacks before anybody asked him about them, and was asked three separate times, by three separate people, whether the afternoon changes what people think of him.
Sunday, September 13, 2026 · EverBank Stadium, Jacksonville, Florida · 4:38 p.m. ET
He was the third Browns player to the backdrop and the group had thinned by then, because Harold Fannin Jr. had gone first and been quick about it. Sanders came out in the team hoodie with the hood up and did not push it back until the fourth question, in a corridor that was still warm.
He did not sit. There was nothing to sit on. Behind him a cart went past twice and somebody from the equipment staff apologised both times.
He was loud and he was fast. He cut into the end of two questions, and twice he asked the reporter something back before he answered.
Twenty-of-twenty-four, 275, two touchdowns, no interceptions. What was that like out there?
Felt normal.
Truly. Wednesday felt worse than that did.
Mary Kay Cabot · cleveland.comYour QBR last year, 18.9, finished fifth-worst in a 696-season sample. Seven starts, ten interceptions against seven touchdowns. What is the difference between that quarterback and the one this afternoon?
It’s a different offense. It’s different coaching, it’s a whole different deal than what that was. My arm the same arm.
I threw twenty-four times today. Four of ’em didn’t get there. Two I put out of bounds on purpose ’cause there wasn’t nothing, one I missed, one I threw behind KC and he still almost had it. So that’s the day.
The third-and-two to Concepcion in the second quarter went for fifty-five. Take us through it.
Play action, off the same run action we been running the whole first half. They had one safety and he was late getting over the top, and the corner’s pressed up on KC by himself.
So I turn around and it’s already done. KC beat him off the ball so bad I ain’t have to do nothing but let it go. That’s not a hard throw. That’s a hard release and that was him.
Then Quinshon go thirty on the next play. Two plays.
Was that a check at the line or was that the call?
That was the call.
Third-and-two. Y’all hear what I’m saying? Third-and-two on the road and he sent it. Go ask him about that one, I just threw it.
On the protection. You had a rookie centre and Max Iheanachor on Josh Hines-Allen most of the day. How did the front hold up?
Line was clean.
Them four sacks was me. All four.
Two of ’em the ball supposed to be gone and I’m standing back there still looking for something that ain’t there. One I tried to get out the back of it and there wasn’t nowhere to go, I should’ve took the checkdown, it was right there. And the one I threw at the ground, that’s a bad one. That’s a bad one, and it’s fourteen yards I gave back in a game we was already up in.
Max had Hines-Allen by hisself for a long time today. That’s a grown man over there and he ain’t say one word about it after. Don’t put none of that on the line.
Jacksonville won thirteen games last year and you were plus nine and a half coming in here. What did they show you early?
First drive they gave us a front we hadn’t seen on none of the tape. Campanile does that, he’s got stuff he keeps. And we ran it right at it anyway, ’cause that’s what got called, and it went for six or seven.
After that it was stuff we been seeing since Tuesday. Coach and Bajakian had a sheet up in the room with what they do on second-and-medium, what they do when they get you behind, and it was on there. Both of them was on there.
I wasn’t thinking out there today. I been in an offense where you standing back there thinking. I wasn’t thinking today, not one time, and that’s twenty-four throws.
Daryl Ruiter · 92.3 The FanA lot of people spent the summer saying you shouldn’t have this job. Does today change that?
Change it for who?
Nah, I’m asking. For y’all? For them? ’Cause y’all gon’ find something either way and that’s fine, I ain’t mad about it, that’s the job.
I threw it good today. Whatever anybody wants to do with that is on them.
Both touchdowns went to Harold Fannin. Four yards and five yards, and then he carried the third one in himself from a yard out.
Harold.
Three times he scored and he did the exact same thing every time. Hand the ball to the man in the stripes, jog off. Like he threw something in the trash.
I told him after the second one, bro, you gotta do something, it’s Week 1. He looked at me like I was speaking another language. He said okay and went and sat down.
You scored touchdowns on four of six trips inside the twenty.
Four out of six. And one of them two is the fourth down I already told y’all about, so.
Down there it’s Harold and it’s Quinshon and it ain’t complicated. We got two tight end stuff we been running since June and Harold’s the second man in it every single time. He runs about two yards and he’s open. Four yards, five yards, that’s what them was.
Ain’t nothing hard about that from where I’m standing.
National reporterShedeur, going back eighteen months. You were the story of that draft for the wrong reasons, you were a fifth-round pick with double-digit interceptions in eight games, and you got the Pro Bowl call as a replacement, which a lot of the league took as a courtesy to your family. Today you go 20-of-24 in a stadium like this one. How much of this afternoon was about the thirty-one teams that passed on you, and did you think about your father when you came off that field?
Who you with?
(The reporter says the outlet again. Sanders nods once.)
Okay.
Nah, I don’t be thinking about them teams. That’s a whole different year.
And that Pro Bowl thing was the league calling my phone, that wasn’t my pops. Y’all had a whole month to look that up.
(He looks past him at the rest of the group. The next question came from the front and it was about the red zone.)
Quinshon Judkins had fifteen carries for ninety-six and two scores.
He was running mad today. He been running mad since camp, that ain’t new in our building.
On the thirty he stiff-armed two people on one run. Two of ’em, same run. I’m standing on the sideline with my hands on my head like I’m in the stands.
That’s legendary. Go watch that one again.
(Judkins goes past the group with ice on his shoulder and his jersey in his hand.)
Quinshon. QUINSHON. Ninety-six? That’s all you got for me?
(Judkins says something without stopping. Sanders laughs and turns back.)
My fault. He heard me.
You ran three times for thirty, long of seventeen.
That ain’t my game.
(Laughs.)
They gave me it. One time they dropped eight and wasn’t nobody within fifteen yards of me, so I ran. And I slid. Y’all saw me slide.
A year ago this hire was a punchline on national television. Does a game like this —
See, I be waiting on that one. Every week.
He called that third-and-two. He called the two-minute before halftime the exact way he told us Thursday he was gonna call it, the exact way, and it went how he said it would. It happened like that in June too, and it happened in camp, and I still be standing there after like, alright.
Y’all watched the game. I don’t know what else I’m supposed to give you on that.
(Mansour comes down the corridor with two staff and a folded call sheet, headed for the buses. Sanders stops mid-answer.)
Coach. Coach! Tell ’em.
(Mansour stops behind the group.)
MansourTell them what?
Third-and-two. Tell ’em who called it.
MansourThe two fourth downs are mine. That’s all I’ve got for anybody in a hallway.
(He keeps walking.)
That’s not what I asked you!
(Laughter. Mansour puts a hand up without turning around.)
He do that every time. Since February he do that.
And them two fourth downs wasn’t him, by the way. The second one I put us in third-and-nine before it even got to fourth, and he know that, and he’s gon’ stand up there and say it was him anyway.
KC Concepcion caught all six of his targets for 119 in his first NFL game.
Six for six.
That release he ran on the fifty-five, he been running that on Denzel Boston since about the third day of camp. Same one. It ain’t nothing new, he just did it on TV.
He’s twenty-one. I like him a lot.
Dillon Gabriel and Taylen Green were both waiting for you at the bench after the second touchdown.
Dillon be in my ear the whole game. He’s on the headset and he’s telling me what the safety did before I even sit down. Every drive, all four quarters, and he had it right every time.
Taylen just be yelling. That’s a different thing, that ain’t coaching. But I like it.
It was over a hundred degrees at kickoff.
It was hot.
My cleats was hot. Like the bottom of my feet standing on the sideline, I never had that before in my life.
That’s why he had us practicing at one o’clock in Berea for two weeks. The old heads was mad about it. Ask Elgton. He got a whole speech about it.
The stadium emptied out early in the fourth.
I seen it.
It was loud early though. On that third-and-two they was loud, I couldn’t hear my own cadence and Park had to turn around and point at me before we even got set. People act like it ain’t a real place to play, it’s a real place to play.
Then it got quiet.
You found out Wednesday that you were starting Week 1. Sitting here now, does the wait matter?
I should’ve had it in June.
That’s not me being — nah. That’s where I’m at with it. I told him that in June, I told y’all that, and going 20-of-24 don’t change it and it don’t un-change it neither. I was the quarterback in June.
He kept it honest with me the whole time though. Every single week I knew what he wanted out of me and I knew where I stood, and I ain’t never had to go find that out from somebody else in the building. So me and him good. We been good.
Cleveland was third down 8-for-11 today.
Eight for eleven.
That’s Travis. Switzer had us on third down all week, and it’s a lot of third-and-three, third-and-two, because Quinshon’s getting six on first down. That’s the whole reason it looks like that. It ain’t me being great on third down, it’s me being on third-and-two.
You punted once and didn’t turn it over.
One punt.
Bojorquez was standing next to me on the sideline in the fourth like he was at somebody’s cookout. He asked me was I hot. I said you ain’t done nothing all day, bro.
Zac Jackson · The AthleticNationally the argument about you has been the same argument for two years. Does an afternoon like this move it at all?
It’s the same argument ’cause it’s the same people.
Like — the ones on TV, they gon’ say it’s one game. They been saying sample size since I got here. So Monday it’s gon’ be Jacksonville was flat, and then it’s gon’ be —
(He stops. He looks at his phone, then back at the group.)
Nah. I lost it. I don’t care.
Truly, I was going somewhere with that and I don’t care where it was going. Next one.
What’s tonight look like?
We fly at seven. I’ma eat on the plane and go to sleep.
I got them peanut butter things in my locker at home. That’s what I’m thinking about, if that’s a story.
Last one. Is there anything you’ll watch tonight?
The sacks.
I know where they at. I don’t need the tape to find ’em, I know what they was.
(A Browns PR staffer holds up two fingers. Sanders is already moving.)
Nah. Go get Quinshon, he the one been running.
Sanders spoke for twelve minutes and took nineteen questions, four of them about the four sacks, three of them versions of the same question about what the afternoon proves. Fannin, who scored three times, had been at the same backdrop before him and was gone in about ninety seconds. Judkins, Concepcion and Grant Delpit all spoke further up the corridor while he was still going. The plane left Jacksonville at 7:10 p.m. Cleveland is at Tampa Bay next Sunday at one o’clock.
