An anonymous defensive coordinator offered one of the harshest lines in Mike Sando’s 2026 insider quarterback tiers: “I'd sleep like a baby if I got to play him every week.”
That comment landed inside The Athletic’s annual poll of 50 NFL executives and coaches, where 35 quarterbacks were sorted into four tiers. And it landed with Shedeur Sanders of the Cleveland Browns, who checked in at 35th overall.
The number is ugly enough on its own, but the quote gives it teeth. Sanders is now trying to close the gap on veteran Deshaun Watson in Cleveland’s battle for the Week 1 starting job, and the league’s evaluation of him is clearly not flattering.
Watson didn’t fare much better. He was 32nd among the 35 quarterbacks, sitting ahead of only Michael Penix Jr., Jacoby Brissett, J.J.
McCarthy, and Sanders. The difference came down to how the votes broke.
Watson picked up one Tier 2 vote, with Sando noting the lone outlier was “betting on (head coach Todd Monken’s) ability to bring out the best in what’s left of him,” while Watson otherwise drew 35 Tier 4 votes and two Tier 5 votes.
Sanders, meanwhile, got just one Tier 3 vote and 12 Tier 5 votes. The Athletic defined Tier 5 as “not a starter, period.”
At least a dozen NFL execs and coaches don’t believe Shedeur Sanders is a starter
That’s not exactly a shocking verdict if you remember how the 2025 NFL Draft played out. Mel Kiper Jr. kept pushing Sanders as a first-round-caliber talent, but the league made its own statement when he slid to No. 144 overall in the fifth round.
Still, the poll only tells part of the story. Sando’s breakdown pointed to Sanders ranking last in EPA per pass play among the 37 quarterbacks who started at least seven games in 2025. What the numbers didn’t capture was the mess around him.
By September, Cleveland’s offensive line was already breaking down because of injuries, and Sanders was still buried on the depth chart. As a fifth-round pick and the second of the Browns’ two drafted quarterbacks, he entered his first offseason program fourth on the depth chart behind Joe Flacco, Kenny Pickett, and fellow rookie Dillon Gabriel.
He didn’t get thrown into the fire until Week 12. By then, Cleveland was down to Joel Bitonio at left guard and mostly backups elsewhere on the line. The Browns couldn’t run the ball with any consistency, and the skill-position group was rough enough to draw the kind of description that would make any quarterback wince - maybe even historically bad without the brilliance of tight end Harold Fannin Jr.
There was also the coaching situation. All seven of Sanders’ starts came under Kevin Stefanski, who was essentially already on his way out before the season ended.
Even with that backdrop, Sanders managed to win three of his seven starts. A week into training camp, he’s holding a 50/50 split of first-team reps with Watson, which says something about where he stands right now inside Cleveland’s quarterback room.
So the rankings should be taken with a grain of salt. No serious evaluator is taking 34 quarterbacks ahead of Sanders after what he was asked to navigate last year. He was a 23-year-old rookie, got almost no real runway to develop in 2025, and still flashed enough to look like a capable NFL starter at times.
It wasn’t pretty. But it also wasn’t a fair fight. Sanders appears to be working and improving, and Monken now has a chance to speed up that process as camp intensifies.
The Athletic’s quarterback exercise was sharp, and the presentation was strong. But the broader NFL message around Sanders still feels off. Calling his rookie season a total failure leaves out too much of what actually happened.
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