With the kind of spotlight an NFL training camp receives, no detail goes unnoticed, especially when it involves a high-stakes starting quarterback battle like the one at the Cleveland Browns. Shedeur Sanders appeared at the camp with a taped finger, sparking some serious discussion among fans.
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“He got a blister on his finger of his throwing hand,” Hellion Boog Knight, Shedeur Sanders’ media manager, wrote on X, replying to a fan observation of the quarterback’s wrapped finger.
The issue was first reported by 92.3 The Fan’s Jonathan Peterlin, who was present at the site. He confirmed that people around Sanders claimed he was dealing with a blister, and that “people are not being sensitive enough” towards the problem.
“That’s what it is,” Peterlin said. “We watched the man basically get degloved in a game against the Bears. He stayed out there and tried to play through it all. He’s just a gamer. The ball isn’t going to be a perfect tight spiral when you have a blister on your throwing hand on one of your fingers. That’s just the reality of it. He’s still out there grinding, locating passes where they need to be.”
It was not the first time Sanders had found himself dealing with a similar issue. In December last year, the Cleveland Browns quarterback was forced to leave a game against the Buffalo Bills after injuring his little finger.
Sanders was unable to pinpoint exactly how it happened. The injury appeared to occur after he lofted a pass toward running back Quinshon Judkins near Buffalo’s goal line, when he soon realized something was wrong with his hand.
“You can look online and see what my finger looks like if you want,” Sanders said at the time. “I’m sure they’ve got the details on there. I don’t know, my pinky just—I put on my handwarmer and was like, ‘Why’s my pinky not getting warm?’
“I did everything to come back because I didn’t want to put Dillon (Gabriel) in a bad situation since I was a two.”
Coming back to the present, this minor finger issue arises at a troubling time for Sanders. Watson seems to have pulled away in the race for the QB1 job by replacing Sanders in first-team practices on days the coaching staff intended for the younger QB.
So far, Sanders was going toe-to-toe with Watson for the QB1 job. However, with the coaches relegating him to second-team duties, where he also split time with Dillon Gabriel, it looks like Sanders is out of the running.
The head coach later clarified that it was just a compensation since Sanders has “gotten a few more reps with the ones.” But it wasn’t just a one-off; Sports Illustrated’s Nick Pedone noted that Sanders being switched out on Day 10 was the second such occurrence in three practices.
For now, the Browns are looking forward to the preseason game against the Chicago Bears, Buffalo Bills, and the New England Patriots. Monken plans on giving each of the top quarterbacks a chance to start and evaluate their performance.
Previously, when asked whether he had settled on a starting quarterback for the game against Chicago, Monken said:
“I have not. They’re each going to start a game. How do I want it, that’s something we’re working through. We’re going to go through this week, and next week we’ll have to decide when we practice against the Bills, because you’re not going to give just one practice, you’re not going to give one of the quarterbacks the ones, you’re going to have to rotate those guys some in the preseason practices.”
“As long as we’re still sharing reps, it’s a competition. After those two games, we’ll be closer to at least having a better idea.”
Sanders has been listed as a co-starter on the Browns’ unofficial depth chart, insider Mary Kay Cabot reported. And the QB has kept his mind open to whatever comes his way.
“We like the hard coaching and we like all that stuff because we know it’s coming from a place of wanting us to be great,” Shedeur Sanders told Bernie Kosar during a chat on August 11. “Everybody’s goal is aligned here. That’s why we don’t have the petty quarterback battles internally.”
With Cleveland’s preseason evaluation approaching its most important stage, even a minor reduction in Sanders’ throwing workload could affect the number of opportunities he’d get.