Two weeks after waiting for the draft of Sheder Sanders at the NFL, Sanders finally entered the field as Cleveland Brown at the Recruit of the team. After the first session on Friday, he was the last player off the field.
“My job here is not to prove that people are wrong,” Sanders said during his first media availability on Saturday. “It’s to prove me.”
When he received the call from the Director General of Browns, Andrew Berry, the last day of the NFL draft, Sanders celebrated by jumping in a swimming pool. This weekend, Sanders is at the end of the Browns game book when he started his professional career.
Sanders said he was not focused on the past or even on the job competition and the potential role that awaits him this summer. He is busy learning, familiarizing himself with his environment and trying to show the people in charge that the Browns finally made this call was the right one.
“I don’t even try to think about this day (of the project),” said Sanders. “I have practice today.”
Sanders universally had first and second round notes of the NFL recovery experts, but it was not selected before the last day of the project. The Browns exchanged 22 places in the fifth round to select Sanders at No. 144, making Sanders the seventh and last selection of the Browns – and the second quarter that the team took.
In the Recruit Minicamp, the choice of the third round Dillon Gabriel was the first on Friday when the Browns organized competitive exercises during training. Sanders launched second in the work of 11 against 11 and 7-sur 7 while the recruit passers-by experienced the installation and the first stages of what was announced as a quarter-back competition of four men this summer with Gabriel and Sanders starting behind the veterans Joe Flacco and Kenny Pickett.
By name and by its 2.2 million Instagram followers, Sanders is the most famous of the four. His father, Deion, was his university coach and is a temple of professional football renown. President Donald Trump posted on the social networks of his waiting project, and Tom Brady sent him a post-Draft text message encouraging Sanders to focus on the future, not on his waiting extension.
“My story is going to be similar,” said Sanders about his interaction with Brady, a sixth round choice in 1999. “I was a late recovery choice, but we are here now, so none of this is important. It was just counting that day, and I’m just excited to be here and ready to work.”
Although the recruits of Browns were not allowed to establish the team before Thursday, Sanders went to the northeast of Ohio a few days after the draft. He trained in a local sports training center and visited a Cleveland high school in the city center to speak to students, which Sanders said that he had done “everywhere” that he was before because he likes to connect with young people, not because he was looking for spotlights or post-draft redemptions.
“You appreciate life and you appreciate the opportunities that wake up every day,” said Sanders. “So that is why (the fall of the project) is nothing for me, really. No matter what in any situation, I can’t really be gradually deleted.
“It’s like playing a quarter. You are going there, you may not have scored the whole game or anything, but when it will happen to these last two minutes, and it’s time to locate yourself, you cannot be in your feelings. You cannot break down. You have another chance.”
The competition for the starting work and other roles in the broad quarter-back room of the Browns will not really start until later this spring, although the Browns coach, Kevin Stefanski, said on Friday that the team added competitive periods to the script of the Recruit of the Mini-Camp, because he wanted the four quarters to take as many representatives as possible.
The Browns drafted Gabriel in the third round at No. 94, and no other quarter was selected in the 50 choices between Gabriel and Sanders. Now that there are four quarters at least somewhat somewhat in the mixture of what Berry and Stefanski said they are an open competition, the race for real representatives and the additional opportunities will resemble the expectation of Sanders draft: interesting and closely examined.
“It’s day after day,” said Sanders. “I just find something (in practice), I want to perfect it and improve it at best with my abilities. That’s all I really focus on – being there, being just a leader, being a big teammate, do what I have to do each time. So, I’m just grateful for an opportunity.
Friday, Sanders and Jabre Barber, a wide test receiver from Texas A&M, were the last of the 47 participants of Minicamp to leave the field of practice, realizing in additional throws for almost 30 minutes.
After the recruit Minicamp finished with the training sessions on Saturday and Sunday, the recruits of the Browns will join the veterans of the team in the official training program of the offseason on Monday. The team’s activity practices organized of the team start in the last week of May, and we will see if Sanders can earn more rehearsals than a fourth recruit from the fourth channel
(Photo: Nick Cammett / Getty Images)
