In a perception-is-reality world, where fairness is often discarded on this side of the information superhighway, Shedeur Sanders has been viewed as a player of privilege and an overhyped product of daddy ball.

We all know what daddy ball is because we have seen it time and again at the local youth level. The son is protected by a father who just so happens to be on the coaching staff or on the league board, or both, making the best interests of the team a secondary concern.

For a young quarterback, having your old man running the team is like having an extra tackle on each side of the offensive line, making the pocket feel impenetrable.

Sanders doesn’t just have any football father, either. Deion Sanders is an all-time NFL great and probably the best cornerback who has ever lived. He had the institutional knowledge of the game to qualify as his son’s offensive coordinator in high school and head coach at Jackson State and Colorado.

And if Deion were the coach or general manager of the Tennessee Titans on the night of April 24, 2025, you can rest assured that Cam Ward would be playing elsewhere, and Shedeur would have been the first pick of the draft, not the 144th.

Cleveland’s Kevin Stefanski became Sanders’ first coach who wasn’t a member of his immediate family. Frankly, ever since the Browns selected the Colorado star in the fifth round, Stefanski hasn’t appeared thrilled about the pairing. Sometimes, when asked about the rookie quarterback Cleveland drafted after the coach’s preferred rookie quarterback, Dillon Gabriel, Stefanski has looked and sounded like a B-list actor in a B-minus movie struggling to play a perfectly contented boss.

But this is where a perception-is-reality world finally works in Sanders’ favor. While my colleague Jason Lloyd was right in asserting that any future books written about Cleveland’s in-house conspiracy to undermine Sanders belong on the fiction shelves, the Browns clearly haven’t done right by Shedeur.

Just like they haven’t done right by any quarterback since … since … the great Bernie Kosar?

So when Sanders makes his first NFL start Sunday in Las Vegas, a week after his face-plant against Baltimore in relief of the concussed Gabriel, Sanders should understand that he is in a place of tremendous opportunity.

And not just because the Raiders are in the same 2-8 mess as the Browns. For the first time in his football life, Sanders, the ultimate overdog, has become a likable underdog. He will be the easiest NFL player to root for this weekend because the prevailing perception says that Sanders got screwed.

By NFL scouts who should have given him at least a second-round grade. By NFL executives who wanted to send him a draft-day message about humility.

By a Browns coaching staff that invested too much time and energy in the 5-11 Gabriel, who doesn’t have elite physical tools.

Put aside the debate over first-team reps in practice, and whether Sanders should’ve gotten some — he didn’t get any — after he was elevated from the third string to the second string. Either way, Sanders could have helped himself in his relief appearance against the Ravens, and he most certainly did not.

He had a couple of moments that reminded everyone of the kid who, in his final season at Colorado, threw for 37 touchdowns and 4,134 yards and completed 74 percent of his passes. But overall, Sanders was as dreadful against Baltimore as his numbers in the box score indicated — 4-for-16 passing for 47 yards, an interception, a fumble, two sacks and a 13.5 passer rating.

Though his choice to remain alone on the bench and skip the postgame handshake ritual was like many of his decisions in the pocket — a poor one — Sanders was likely reacting to the pressure he puts on himself to be great, and the realization that he just notarized Stefanski’s worst fears about him.

The good news? Sanders did not have a 0.0 rating against Baltimore like another son of NFL royalty, Eli Manning, posted in his fourth career start, going 4-for-18 for 27 yards with two interceptions. Back then, while taking a ton of first-team reps in practice, the No. 1 pick of the 2004 draft spent a few weeks looking every bit as bad as Sanders did Sunday.

The same Eli Manning who became a two-time Super Bowl MVP for the Giants.

This isn’t to say that Sanders will develop into that kind of quarterback. This is to say that rookies thrown into the fray against an organization (like Baltimore) forever defined by consistent winning and smart coaching often come across as completely overwhelmed.

Twenty-five years ago, Tom Brady, the undisputed GOAT of his craft, threw all of three passes as a rookie in New England, where he was inactive for 14 games. Brady said on Logan Paul’s podcast in May that he knew Sanders well and texted him a reminder that the seven-time champ was the 199th pick in the 2000 draft.

“So, who can speak on it better than me?” Brady said he texted Sanders. “Like what that really means. Use it as motivation. You’re going to get your chances. Go take advantage of it.”

Well, with Gabriel out, Sanders has the kind of chance Brady didn’t get until Drew Bledsoe got knocked out in the second game of his second season. “Mentally and emotionally, I’m in a great place overall,” Sanders said recently. “In life, there’s always going to be adversity. Things aren’t always going to go as planned, but I would say I’m prepared for everything.

“I feel like I’m the guy. I know I’m the guy, but you just have to be able to see. The game got to speak.”

Yes, it does. Sanders said nothing much can faze him anymore, not even the fact that his house was burglarized during the Baltimore game.

He’s got the ball in his hands. He’s got the practice reps behind him. He’s got a beatable opponent in front of him.

Oh, and he’s also got millions of strangers pulling for him. This strange drama might actually work out perfectly for Sanders. No longer the quarterback protected by daddy ball, Sanders is now the long shot who was given a raw deal by The System.

Everyone loves an underdog, even a privileged one.