After a rough debut against the Ravens, Shedeur Sanders finally won a game for the Cleveland Browns in his first-ever start. His performance wasn’t spectacular in the 24-10 win over the Raiders, but it was enough to get Cleveland over the line. Yet when head coach Kevin Stefanski downplayed the rookie’s role in the victory, former Browns QB Robert Griffin III didn’t hold back.

“If you listen to Kevin Stefanski’s postgame speech, he wanted nothing with giving Shedeur any type of credit for the way that the team performed,” he said on The Dan Patrick Show, while addressing Stefanski’s treatment of his rookie quarterbacks.

Griffin acknowledged that the skeptics might point out the 47 yards or the bad interception thrown by Sanders during Week 11 against the Ravens, but he also stressed that those numbers were not the story of the way the team responded to him.

For the Week 12 game, Griffin III argued that the coach was resisting and declining to acknowledge just how remarkably different the team was with Sanders under center.

Former quarterback pointed to an example early in the game: the Browns’ defense exploding for 10 sacks, feeding off Sanders’ poise and mobility.

“You haven’t seen that from a quarterback at the starting position for the Cleveland Browns in quite some time,” he said, praising Sanders’ ability to extend plays and create on broken downs, something Cleveland’s offense had lacked all season.

In Week 12, he completed 11 of 20 passes for 209 yards with one touchdown.

The timing of Sanders’ emergence only heightened the discussion. He didn’t get his first full week of practice reps with the starters until Joe Flacco moved on, Kenny Pickett went down injured, and Dillon Gabriel, Stefanski’s apparent preference, was placed into concussion protocol.

Sanders repaid the opportunity with a gritty road victory, becoming the first QB since the Browns’ 1999 reactivation to win his debut start.

Still, Stefanski may have fed the controversy himself. In the locker room after the win, he chose Myles Garrett, not Sanders, for the game ball. Garrett had three sacks, but the decision infuriated former NFL stars Shannon Sharpe and Chad Ochocinco, who saw it as another example of Stefanski downplaying Sanders’ role in Cleveland’s most complete performance of the season.

RG3 insisted there was no need for such equivocation.

RG3 on Gabriel’s future uncertainty

The verdict was simple, in his mind: Sanders should be the Browns’ QB1 for the duration of the campaign. Griffin emphasized how Sanders’ command of the huddle, big-play poise, and general ability to elevate everyone around him have been worth more than any stat-line nitpicking.

”It was the extended plays, the big playmaking on the broken plays that they’ve been missing this entire season that Shader was able to pull off,” Griffin said. That’s why he should be the starter.”

While Sanders surged, Griffin didn’t hold back about what that meant for Dillon Gabriel. With Gabriel now officially cleared from concussion protocol, Stefanski was asked whether the veteran rookie would regain his starting job.

He stayed vague: “I am just gonna focus on this week.”

But Griffin had no interest in ambiguity; he believes the Browns should rely on Sanders.

The numbers back the argument. Gabriel went 1–5 in six starts, averaging just 117.1 passing yards per game with the worst PFF grade of any of the 39 qualifying quarterbacks (49.0). His reluctance to push the ball downfield stalled the offense, as evidenced by his 2-for-8 accuracy on deep throws this season.

Sanders, by contrast, is already 3-for-7 in a game and a half, bringing a vertical element the Browns had been lacking for months. And with Gabriel returning from protocol but not returning to form, Griffin cautioned that going back to Stefanski’s original plan would amount to a step backward.