On April 29, former Tampa Bay Buccaneers safety Shilo Sanders typed five words on Instagram – “Go make a sandwich, Mary” – and deleted them within hours. The comment was gone, but the fallout wasn’t.

Shilo was responding to Mary Kay Cabot, the veteran Cleveland Browns beat reporter who had written that veteran quarterback Deshaun Watson had “the inside track” to be the team’s QB1 over Shedeur Sanders. It was this take that sparked it all. And by Monday, May 4, Shilo’s father, the legendary Deion Sanders, addressed the noise.

“We’re gonna start this week off right!” he posted on X. “No drama, no mess that creates stress & no Loud Talkin! Let’s stay calm, cool & considerate of others’ emotions. This week is gonna be phenomenal! #CoachPrime”

It felt like a broader message – one that arrives in the middle of an active controversy over his son’s conduct. Deion didn’t name Shilo, didn’t reference the comment, but the subtext here was impossible to ignore.

When the story around Shilo and Cabot first broke, Coach Prime had already weighed in on the matter when asked about it, while on vacation with Karrueche Tran.

“You’re majoring on a minor,” Deion said. “Ya’ll over here trippin about what somebody said on the internet. I ain’t got time for that. I have too many things I’m praying for. You sitting on that right on the ocean? And you think I got time for this?”

While Shilo had deleted his sandwich comment, what made the matter even more complicated was that he went live on Twitch the next day and delivered an even harsher take on Cabot.

“And this is to Mary Kay: If you’re gonna be a reporter, be a reporter and report facts,” Shilo had said on the stream. “Whenever you have your opinion, and your opinion is always something hateful to Shedeur, then it makes it seem like it’s something weird, like it’s an agenda that you have going on. There’s plenty of women that take reporting football serious and actually do homework and study the game and get the statistics right and get the news right, but with you, it’s so much emotion.”

Pilar Sanders, Shilo and Sheduer’s mother, had also weighed in with an Instagram comment on a separate occasion. At the time, she had tagged Josina Anderson, the Emmy-winning journalist, as a contrast to Cabot, noting that Anderson “knows football and how to do it right!”

As for Deion Sanders, his Monday post followed the same tone as his “majoring on a minor” comment. Neither addressed the specific comment, and neither engaged with the criticism directed at Shilo. Both responses kept the focus away from the substance of the backlash, which had by then drawn reactions from prominent media personalities and the Browns organization itself.

Shilo Sanders facing heat for his comments

Mary Kay Cabot began covering the Browns in 1988. She won the Professional Football Writers of America’s Bill Nunn Memorial Award in 2025 and is a longtime member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s Selection Committee. When Shilo’s comments surfaced, she chose to stand behind her credentials.

“I really do believe that I have been an inspiration for lots of women and young girls to know that you can go out there and do a good job in a man’s world and take on all of that that comes with that,” Cabot said on 92.3 The Fan.

Former NFL linebacker Emmanuel Acho addressed Shilo’s comments on the Speakeasy show.

“Shilo Sanders crossed the line with the Mary Kay Cabot ‘make me a sandwich’ comment,” Acho wrote on X, sharing the clip from the show. “Just because he doesn’t think it’s misogynistic doesn’t make it any less grossly misogynistic.”

On the show itself, Acho added: “You’re entering into this media landscape, be mindful of the enemies you create before you create allies. Also, Shilo, Mary Kay is better at what she does than you are at what you do. So you just have to be cognizant of that truth.”

Sanders, meanwhile, responded by going on the Coach JB Show, where he positioned himself as a media peer.

“I don’t hate women. I love women. That is just stupid,” Sanders said. “I’m not on a team. I’m a media guy. No different than you. No different than her. If I see something that interests me, I can talk about it.”

Incidentally, Acho had noted on the Speakeasy show that Coach JB had previously said ESPN’s Mina Kimes “doesn’t understand football because she doesn’t understand defenses.” Acho advised Shilo to be mindful of who he “associates himself with.”

Shilo’s NFL standing is also worth noting here. He was waived by the Buccaneers after drawing a $4,669 fine for throwing a punch at Buffalo Bills tight end Zach Davidson in the 2025 preseason. Since then, he has not received any offers to join an NFL roster. Meanwhile, Browns head coach Todd Monken has also gone on record to address the situation.

“That’s a man making a comment on social media,” Monken said. “That’s someone reporting something they believe. That’s their opinion. Not my opinion. I didn’t say that. Our daily inner workings with the quarterbacks and the players is gonna mean more than what is said outside of there.”

As of Monday, Shilo hasn’t issued a formal apology. Deion’s X post and Pilar’s Instagram take were the most public responses from the family. Whoever wins the QB1 inside the Browns’ building, one thing is for sure – this narrative around Shilo Sanders isn’t going away anytime soon.