Cleveland Browns quarterback Shedeur Sanders has already become rich enough for strangers to start asking him for money.

This week, Shedeur shared a screenshot of a message he received from a fan on Instagram, and his response was immediate. The person, no doubt having heard of Sanders’ recent $17.7 million payday, wrote: “Yo ik you’re having motion. Are you trying to pay off my car 29.3K left. Good pub.”

Sanders didn’t name the sender, and the screenshot gave no clue who it was either. But Sanders’ response was immediate.

“Yea I think I’ll get off IG now,” he wrote above the screenshot he shared.

Notably, this unusual request comes days after Shedeur Sanders turned heads with financial optics.

Sanders’ rookie contract with the Browns is modest by quarterback standards, earning him just $4.65 million across four seasons. This is exactly why the off-field number caused such a stir.

The NFLPA filed its annual report this week with the Department of Labor, which outlined a $17,712,015 payout to Sanders’ SS2Legendary LLC. The $17.7M came in 13 installments labeled ‘Royalties/Player Marketing,’ including merch, trading cards, and event fees. With the earnings, Sanders set a new ceiling for what a young player’s commercial pull can be long before his NFL resume is perfected.

With this $17.7 million payout, Shedeur Sanders has officially surpassed Tom Brady’s 2021 season payout, nearly doubling the amount from Brady’s $9.5 million. And he didn’t even do all the work in 2025.

“As one source suggested, the $9.24 million payment to Sanders in May 2025 (the biggest out of those 13 installments) may have reflected his individual trading-card guarantee – something that likely would have been negotiated before he slipped from round one to round five in the 2025 NFL Draft,” Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk reported.

The brand Sanders, which he built over the years, traveled with him to the NFL. The revenue stream, just like Sanders’ media pull, continues. But now that brings him fans who ask for car payments. Shedeur is still on Instagram, but if any crazier requests follow this one, he might really get off Instagram for good. For all of his 2.7 million followers, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

The Sanders family is big on generosity

Sanders has spent years building a public persona that mixes access, swagger, and generosity. After a fire sparked by a gas explosion destroyed the houses of the Garden Valley Apartments, he organized a charitable event to bring the community together. Deion Sanders’ own charitable work set the template that Shedeur now follows and has already shown up long before Shedeur came to the NFL.

Back in 2023, when Shedeur was playing for Colorado, he presented a Gatorade-backed $45K donation to the N.E.D. Falcons Youth Organization in the form of sporting gear and jerseys. But even for the Sanders family’s standards, the request seemed too much.

But the family’s generosity isn’t just limited to that.

In December 2024, the Browns quarterback also gifted offensive lineman Jordan Seaton a $200,000 Maybach for not allowing any pressures or sacks while protecting Shedeur’s blindside.

“He protect the backside so he had to get the ‘Bach [Maybach],” he said.

Then in November last year, Shedeur Sanders worked with a local car dealership to gift a car to a woman in need.

“I’m an Eagles fan but I want to see Shedeur soar,” Wright said after receiving the gift.

And that’s just some of the examples of how the Sanders have made a name off the gridiron. Not hard to understand why that particular fan thought asking for money could be worth the shot.