Shedeur Sanders turns heads in preseason debut, tossing 2 TDs

Shedeur Sanders had the attention of the internet Friday night as he tossed a pair of touchdowns in his NFL preseason debut against the Carolina Panthers.

Sanders completed 14 of 23 passes for 138 yards and two scores to wide receiver Kaden Davis and the Cleveland Browns went on to rout the Panthers, 30-10. He added four rushes for 19 yards.

The former Colorado Buffalo started and played the first nine possessions – plus an end-of-half kneeldown – in his team’s first preseason contest. Sanders got the nod under center partially by necessity, as fellow 2025 draft pick Dillon Gabriel and fourth-year QB Kenny Pickett are both sidelined by injuries. Deshaun Watson is still dealing with the achilles injury that ended his 2024 season, and Joe Flacco, the elder statesman in the Browns quarterback room, did not play.

Tyler Huntley, who Cleveland signed days ago while it dealt with the injuries, finished Friday’s game under center after Sanders was pulled.

Sanders famously plummeted in April’s NFL Draft, being projected as high as an early first-round pick but ultimately going to Cleveland in the fifth round – and as the second QB the Browns took, after Gabriel.

Reports out of Browns camp suggest Sanders also hadn’t been seeing reps with the first team in practice.

The internet loved his redemption in his first NFL action. Football pundits to celebrities like LeBron James and Sanders’s famous father were weighing in, “Shedeur” trended on X and searches for his name spiked on Google, racking up more than 200,000 searches Friday, according to Google Trends data.

Sanders's impressive debut came a little more than a week after his dad, CU head football coach Deion Sanders, revealed he had his bladder removed following a cancer diagnosis during the spring.

Shedeur Sanders had a cryptic message to Deion during his postgame interview:

Coach Prime is expected to be on the sidelines coaching the Buffs – and a college team without Shedeur for the first time since 2020. The father-son duo was coach and QB at Jackson State for two years before their two seasons at Colorado.

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Pat Graham, AP Sports Writer