BEREA, Ohio — Browns quarterback Shedeur Sanders will make his first NFL start on Sunday against the Las Vegas Raiders, named QB1 on Wednesday by head coach Kevin Stefanski.
Sanders has been in the QB2 role since the Browns traded veteran quarterback Joe Flacco at the start of October, moving third-round pick rookie Dillon Gabriel into the QB1 role.
However, after Gabriel sustained a concussion in the first half of the Week 11 game against the Baltimore Ravens, Sanders got his first regular-season action. The Browns turned to Sanders in the second half, but with quite literally no experience with the first team players, the outing wasn't a strong one.
Sanders went 4-for-16 with 46 yards, an interception and two sacks. He was the first to admit it wasn't his best outing, but he and the team both showed confidence that with some reps, it could look much different.
"I don't think I played good. I don't think I played good at all. I think it's a lot of things we need to look at during the week and go and just get comfortable, even throwing routes with Jerry and throwing routes with all those guys. So I think that was my first ball to him all year. No, but other than that, I just think overall we just got to go next weekend and understand, so then we have a week to prepare stuff I like to do," Sanders said after the game.
On Wednesday, the Browns' first practice of the week, preparing for their Week 12 matchup with the Raiders, the team announced Gabriel was not expected to practice, still in concussion protocol.
Stefanski didn't waste time making a decision on who would be QB1.
"Shedeur is going to start at quarterback. Dillon is still in the concussion protocol. He is improving, but obviously, we got to put a plan together for all of our players," Stefanski said to open his Wednesday press conference.
While Sanders didn't have any first-team reps from the moment he was drafted to the Browns to the moment he took the field against the Ravens, this week, he'll get every rep in practice.
Stefanski said this week will be all about Sanders translating his scout team reps and work from the meeting rooms onto the field as he prepares to be the 42nd quarterback to start for the Browns since 1999.
"I think it just goes back to we talk about taking the practice field to the game field, and you try and take the meeting room to the practice field. Like I told the team this morning, we throw so much at them, so much information, so many details about our opponent and our game plan and those types of things, and I think our players do a really nice job of taking that to heart in the meeting room and then going out on the practice field. And Wednesdays are typically the day where you’re still crystallizing it in your mind, if you will, and still getting some of the details down, but by the end of Wednesday, you feel really good about the base game plan. So I think that’s just all quarterbacks are like that, where you get the game plan on Tuesday for a quarterback and you start spending some time with it, and then probably the base game plan starts to really cement in your head sometime around Wednesday evening," Stefanski said.
The work for Sanders began Wednesday and will continue through the week before he makes his NFL starting debut in Vegas Sunday with the 4:05 p.m. kickoff.
