Even with quarterback Kenny Pickett sidelined with a hamstring injury, the Cleveland Browns did not give Shedeur Sanders a single first-team rep in Saturday’s practice.
It turns out that was for good reason, however. Sanders did not throw a football outside of warmups in Saturday’s training camp session as the team held him out with general arm soreness. This means that Joe Flacco and Dillon Gabriel were the only two quarterbacks taking reps in the team’s scrimmage portions of practice, while Sanders did participate in the run game drills and other non-throwing activities.
Advertisement
The rep count and camp stats have been a popular thing to do in training camp, although context is lacking with those. In this regard, there is no playing favorites or withholding of reps from Sanders. In fact, head coach Kevin Stefanski has been high on what Sanders has done in practice to continue to win over the coaching staff.
Sanders will have his first real opportunity to do that this coming week as he is likely to get all of the second half snaps against the Carolina Panthers in Cleveland’s first preseason game. If Sanders wants to prove to the staff that he deserves first-team reps, doing it live against second and third teamers needs to be automatic.
There are still three weeks of training camp left for the Browns to sort through their quarterback situation. Can Sanders prove he deserves more work with the first-team unit?
This article originally appeared on Browns Wire: Browns: Shedeur Sanders gets zero first-team reps due to arm soreness