Since he entered the NFL, Shedeur Sanders’ aim, more than anything else, has been to prove everyone wrong. Unfortunately, it hasn’t gone all that well for him. Despite performing better than any other Cleveland Browns quarterback last season and showing flashes of potential when a lot was going against him, he finds himself at the bottom, once again. 

The Athletic’s Mike Sando recently dropped his quarterback tier rankings and placed the second-year quarterback dead last at No. 35, even below his veteran counterpart Deshaun Watson. But the 35th spot wasn’t the biggest snub for Sanders; it was an NFL exec questioning the very talent that College Football analyst Joel Klatt once compared to the Cincinnati Bengals’ superstar QB Joe Burrow.

“He’s inaccurate at all three levels,” an exec told Sando. “I can’t tell if he is going to get better, but there’s a huge gap between him and competent QB play.”

Per Sando, the voter pool of NFL executives “placed 35 veteran quarterbacks into five tiers, from best (Tier 1) to worst (Tier 5).” The average of these rankings determined the final standings. What’s interesting is that in February last year, a college football analyst, Klatt, had given Sanders the props he deserved coming out of Colorado.

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“If you look at his numbers his last season in 2024, he was outstanding,” Klatt said on his The Joel Klatt show. “74%, that’s right up there with some great seasons in college football. Bo Nix was 77, Mac Jones was 77, Joe Burrow in ’19, that historic run, he’s over 76%. So, Shedeur knows what he is doing.

“He’s got a great command of the offense and football in general. He anticipates incredibly well. He’s more ready now to go and be the starting quarterback than anybody in this draft. He’s the one who is ready right now.”

Flaws in Sanders’ game, according to many NFL personalities, however, only got worse.

“I’d sleep like a baby if I got to play him every week,” an anonymous defensive coordinator mentioned.

Critics would point to the rough start Sanders got in 2025 – eight games, seven starts, a 3-4 record, seven touchdowns and ten interceptions on 56% completions. But none of this tells the truth that Sanders didn’t get first-team reps to give more chances to the veteran Joe Flacco and then Dillon Gabriel. In Week 11, he was pushed onto the field only when the Browns had exhausted all other options, and Gabriel went down into a concussion protocol. Sanders naturally struggled.

Despite showing glimpses of his strong arm that showed the Browns fans some long throws, he got sacked 23 times, losing 164 yards and a lot of momentum in the process behind a porous O-line. Those stat lines are what execs keep going back to.

“He’s not an on-time player, can’t really read through the coverages, is a little bit heavy-footed,” another defensive coordinator added. “He is thicker and harder to tackle than expected, but you shouldn’t lose to him.”

Now, if you look at how Shedeur Sanders has attacked this offseason, that argument might not hold up.

Shedeur Sanders has some NFL execs excited as he continues to prove himself in the training camp

Under new head coach Todd Monken, Shedeur has worked on his speed and accuracy, and impressed the coaches in Cleveland. In the first week of training camp, Shedeur completed 64 of 91 passes (70.3%) with four touchdowns and one interception.

His veteran counterpart, Deshaun Watson, who was ranked 32nd by Sando, struggled with accuracy, throwing six picks against just three touchdowns. At the start of the offseason, multiple reports suggested Watson would win the starting job, but Shedeur seems to have made it a personal mission to flip that narrative on its head. And that’s what got some execs excited, as not all feedback was bad.

“If Shedeur has really invested in himself to be a professional quarterback, studying the playbook and knowing his assignments and being able to get the offense in and out of the huddle at an efficient clip, which he could not do last year, then there might be some upside,” one voter said.

“I thought he was all right, better than expected,” one head coach said. “They did a good job with him of making the game simple. And I thought Shedeur played with a chip on his shoulder.”

That chip on Shedeur Sanders’ shoulder has only grown bigger and heavier as this offseason inches closer to the preseason. The quarterback battle remains undecided, but the belief inside the building is that the team will lock in their QB1 by Week 1 of the regular season.

To that effect, all this 35th-place rank in the worst quarterback tier does is add fuel to Sanders’ 2026 campaign. He’s still on that mission to prove himself right, and he couldn’t have asked for a better rank to rise from.