The newest entity taking their shot to knock Cleveland Browns quarterback Shedeur Sanders down a peg or two is Yahoo Sports. The website’s football podcast Inside Coverage discussed Sanders’ play and hype at minicamp, and host Frank Schwab said the situation reminds him of Tim Tebow. It wasn’t a loving sentiment, describing how he loved Tebow’s style of play, and sees similar positivity in Sanders’ play. It was an intentional low blow at both quarterbacks.

Schwab’s intention was to remind listeners of how the hype surrounding Tebow was undeserved, since he was championed by the masses as a great quarterback when, in fact, he wasn’t even average. Schwab then explains how it’s the same situation in Cleveland. “There’s posts that go up on social media of him throwing a pass, that literally, any NFL quarterback can throw,” Schwab said. “and the caption will just be like, “How could the NFL possibly have let this guy slip in the 5th round, he’s gonna be a Hall of Famer.”

Schwab also explains how unfair it is that Cam Ward, the first overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft, has been overshadowed so far by a fifth-round pick. In this case, Schwab is pretending to be ignorant in order to connect with the less educated football fans who listen to the podcast. He pretends to be perplexed by how this could happen when the reality is, he understands completely why it’s happened, and as a member of the sports media, he actually believes that, in context, it’s justified.

Going into the draft, Sanders was considered a first-round pick. Some pundits had him in the top five, and some even projected him as the top overall pick ahead of Ward. If Sanders had gone first overall to the Tennessee Titans, and Ward had slipped to 144, fans would be in the same boat they are in now. They’d be talking more about a fifth-round pick than the first overall pick. Ward would be the biggest story of the preseason. Being curious and fascinated by the unexpected is completely normal.

Schwab again pretended not to understand the game when he ranted about draft position mattering, despite some people saying it doesn’t. “People say, oh, draft position doesn’t matter once the draft is over, it does matter,” he grumbled. “It absolutely matters.”

The sentiment is designed to be taken extremely literally. Draft position matters in terms of who gets more reps and more opportunities, but who wins camp battles doesn’t have anything to do with draft position. Who wins the position battle is determined by who performs the best. This also isn’t a case for a fifth-round pick trying to beat out a first-round pick. It’s about a fifth beating out a third, an over-the-hill veteran, and a draft bust from 2022. It’s not a world-stopping scenario.

End Of My Yahoo Sports Rant

Yahoo Sports, Tim Tebow, Shedeur Sanders, Stadium Rant

I don’t know if Schwab thinks ignorance sells because he thinks the average fan is ignorant, or if he thinks it’s funny to play dumb, but he absolutely knows better. There was a lot of media and fan attention on Tebow, and the same can be said about Sanders, but the attention is where the similarities end. The reasons for the attention are completely different. Sanders was a projected first-round pick who went in round five. Tebow was a projected third-round pick who went in round one. Had Sanders gone where he was projected, there would be a little attention on him, but going in round five poured a can of gas on what was just a small flame.

The expectations that Sanders wins the starting job come from how he played in college and where he was projected to be drafted. It’s not a case, as suggested by Schwab, that the attention is due to his popularity, which is due to being Dieon’s kid, and not because he’s a good quarterback. If sports media has taught us anything about people who play dumb for clicks, it’s that they are quick to flip-flop. It would not be surprising if Sanders is the Browns’ starter before the end of the year, and it will be equally unsurprising to hear Schwab rave about him in that moment if it means eight or nine more downloads.