00:00Yeah, there's levels to the whole microphone game and Deshaun Watson learned the gravity of that yesterday because I really
00:08thought that even after that disgusting performance where he had a 14 quarterback rating, that he was going to be
00:17the starting quarterback because they've given him so many reps, especially in recent weeks at camp.
00:22This preseason certainly has been tailored to him. The fact that he got to start against the Bears with the
00:27rest of the starters. The fact that Shador got the start against Buffalo without many starters. It all kind of
00:34set up for Deshaun to win this starting quarterback job, be the quarterback week one. And then we've all kind
00:40of said, you know, we'll see what happens from there. You know, if it makes it three or four weeks
00:43and then they have to go to Shador, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
00:48We're just crossing the bridge way sooner than I think we expected we were going to have to. Just because
00:54I really think Deshaun talked himself out of the competition last night.
00:58Yeah, I do too. And I also want to be clear about this. For me, this is not about Deshaun
01:09Watson losing the competition. I think this is about Shador winning it.
01:14I think that Shador has, while I disagree with some of the things that Shador says, especially when it comes
01:22to lecturing the media about how we're supposed to be cheerleaders for him and the Browns, you know, and to
01:29help them be their best.
01:31That's like, sorry, nothing I'd say or do should have any impact on you as a player.
01:39That's just, I am not arrogant enough to think that I impact your success or failure on a field because
01:50I should not.
01:52That being said, I think that he, I think he has represented the Browns well in his availabilities.
02:03I think that his game has improved significantly. It's not a finished product. And we'll be very clear. It's not
02:10a finished product. And by the way, the, uh, the Shador, uh, the, the Shador crazies or whatever will only
02:20hear that from me.
02:21Ooh, Daryl thinks Shador stinks and hates him and wants him to fail. And he's a racist and this, that,
02:26and the other, but no, his game is, is not polished. He's got a ways to go, but I'd rather
02:33watch him than Deshaun. And I, along with, I mean, Todd Munkin said it after the game, how proud of
02:40Shador he was and the progress Shador has made.
02:43It was a really nice preseason start. Like for being out there with a backup offensive line, which did play
02:48well, by the way, right? That whole unit held. Here's what I like most. Forget about the starting eight for
02:55eight. Forget about the, the touchdown to Luke Floria free. It looked professional. It looked like an NFL offense with
03:05him on the field. Yeah. And that's, and honestly, that's all I can ask for of him.
03:09I recognize that he's doing things and being asked to do things. He's never had to do before. This offense
03:17is a lot more complex than he used to have to run. It's completely different from the one he had
03:22to learn under Kevin Stefanski. Okay. And that took a lot of energy. And so all that energy and effort
03:28he put in last year, he had to throw away and start from scratch. So I'm giving the kid his
03:33flowers.
03:34And I do feel like he's done enough on his merits, independent of Deshaun's brutal honesty in the press conference
03:45yesterday.
03:47I feel that on the field judging on the merits, I feel like Shador Sanders won the competition fair and
03:57square and that he gives the Browns the better chance to win. He's got the better attitude. He's got the
04:04better mental makeup. He's got the better physical tools right now. He's got the up better upside. He has grown
04:12in leaps and bounds from operationally.
04:15Like there weren't any operational problems with him on the field yesterday.
04:19No, there were not. You could not say the same about Dylan Gabriel, who got in there and the supercomputer
04:24had quite some issues with the pre-snap operation.
04:27Yeah, you had 35 at one moment there with the supercomputer out there for everybody that still gets on me
04:35because I left the mushroom cloud on Dylan Gabriel during last training camp.
04:40And I admit, I might have crossed the line with the one quote post when I said he didn't belong
04:48on the field or I forget what I posted, but there were people that felt that it was a personal
04:53attack.
04:54Look, again, I'm human. I will cop to maybe I crossed the line there.
05:00You know, it wasn't personal, but I just thought he was that bad and that embarrassingly awful to watch.
05:05And guess what? I was right. Right. I mean, you had the head, your new head coach, your new head
05:12coach said in the postgame press conference yesterday, he would have rather taken a knee.
05:17That's how bad Dylan Gabriel was yesterday. It was embarrassing.
05:21Dodd Munkin said he would have rather taken a knee. It was that bad. OK, so I was right about
05:27Dylan Gabriel.
05:31Now. I'm also right about Shadour. There's a lot of upside with him. Game has a ways to go. A
05:38lot of upside, though.
05:40Tremendous improvement. Operation is better. Accuracy is better. Footwork is better.
05:47His his processing is better. Everything is better. The arrows are all pointing up for Shadour Sanders right now.
05:56OK, I'm in the kid's corner. And what folks don't understand, just because I criticize something doesn't mean I'm hating
06:04on him, doesn't mean that I don't believe in him, doesn't mean that I want him to fail.
06:10He's not the second coming. He's a work in progress.
06:13I know. I know he has his apostles and disciples. OK, I found that out on Friday, but like he's
06:22not infallible.
06:24And I do believe at his core, I think Shadour is a good kid.
06:28I think he might not be surrounded by all the best people.
06:33He might not be getting all the best advice, but that's on him to figure out.
06:37He's his own man. He's going to have to learn that the easy way or the hard way.
06:41OK, and and and hopefully whatever, you know, when he does get feedback, whether it's from the Browns or his
06:49inner circle,
06:50and hopefully he makes the good quality decisions off of that feedback that he receives.
06:56OK. But I do believe he won this competition on his merits.
07:02I'm not just handing it to him because Deshaun Watson blew up in a press conference.
07:07I loved what I saw from Shadour Sanders yesterday, even the interception, which I don't think it was a good
07:12throw.
07:13That's my opinion. I know I think I saw Kurt Warner post something.
07:18I know Lance Reisland probably has a little different look at that because he's a coach.
07:22I'm not. I personally thought the throw could have been a little better.
07:26It was a little off in behind.
07:30That's OK. Like a bad throw is going to happen in a game.
07:32It's not like the whole game where he had bad throws.
07:35He had one bad throw yesterday. Unfortunately, he got tipped and picked.
07:38OK, that happens. Can live with that.
07:40I'm willing to live with that with him.
07:43I would rather live with that with him than have this turn into you put Deshaun out there.
07:49He struggles. The fans get on Deshaun.
07:52And then everybody in the locker room's got to stick up for Deshaun against the fans.
07:56Well, we're at a point now and we just heard it from Chris Easterling in the last segment that that
08:01this has become a mental quarterback competition.
08:04And I think that's where Shador really does deserve the biggest pat on the back, because despite everything that that
08:12that he's kind of had to go through since arriving in Cleveland last year's quarterback competition,
08:18the four guys and there was three people in front of him and he was thrown to ball boys at
08:22training camp last year.
08:24And then this, you know, season where he probably felt like he deserved to be the expected starter coming into
08:30the year because he did show some promising flashes during those seven starts.
08:33And he did finish the year with two wins in the division.
08:37Shador probably felt like he belonged and mentally he's handled all of that tremendously well.
08:43He says the right things when he speaks with us.
08:45You know, sometimes he gets on his soapbox and he is a little bit of a heady individual.
08:49Well, I think that's just who he is, you know, and he does his sermons from the from the mountaintops.
08:54I think that's just really who Shador is.
08:57And I'm not going to hold that against them because I think that's just as a guy what he's made
09:01of.
09:02I think on the field, he's handled this and he's improved and he's getting rid of the football a little
09:08bit quicker and he's certainly processing things quicker.
09:10So everything that they're putting on his plate, he's done really a nice job with as a young player who
09:17is still growing in this league.
09:20Give him this opportunity and see what he does with it.
09:22Like you've got three weeks to get him ready to go for a good Jaguars team, then a good Tampa
09:28team, then back here in Cleveland against a good Carolina Panthers team.
09:32Like drop the act today, name him the starting quarterback, and let's move on with this thing.
09:37It's what always made more sense.
09:39I felt like I was losing my absolute marbles over these last couple of months with everybody trying to sell
09:47me on Deshaun Watson and everybody trying to spin Shador Sanders into some sort of football imbecile because Deshaun Watson
09:54started 72 games in this league and he's been around for a long time and he led the league in
10:00passing back in 2019.
10:02Stop all that mess.
10:04The reason why they were thinking about starting him was because they're paying him $46 million.
10:08And now they're going to pay him $46 million to hold a clipboard because he's not worth the air that
10:14he breathes, unfortunately, to them as an on-the-field quarterback.
10:18He's not worth it.
10:19Yeah, I'm going to tell you right now, Shador Sanders is not a football imbecile.
10:23He's not.
10:24But he's been treated as such at times.
10:27Yeah, and that's fair.
10:29And I will agree with you that there have been, even leading up to the pre-draft process, there were
10:38insinuations.
10:39But just based on what I've observed from him on the field, it's night and day improvement.
10:48He's got a knack.
10:49He climbs the pocket now.
10:52He's not drifting back as much.
10:53He doesn't run around like a chicken with his head cut off like he did at Colorado.
10:57He has a real knack for who's open and when.
11:01And where to put the football to where only the receiver could get it.
11:04Like, he's doing all of these things well.
11:06Drop the act.
11:07We get that you're paying the other guy the money.
11:09We get that you made the worst move in the history of professional sports to bring that guy here.
11:15And then pay him what you paid him with all the baggage that came with it.
11:19Do you have an opportunity, though, to drop the act today, name Shador the starter because he's earned it, and
11:25let's all move on with our lives.
11:27Here's the thing.
11:27Here's the element that I think we've all kind of missed a little bit, and that is Shador's personality.
11:36And I'm not talking about the social media personality or the, you know, the cult-like following that he has.
11:45I'm talking about, like, within his locker room.
11:49Like, he's a very personable person.
11:51He's likable.
11:53Like, I think, similar to what Jared Verse has done, like, I think Shador could potentially have a similar impact.
12:03I don't know how much it'll help the Browns win, but I think Shador Sanders could help this young locker
12:10room immensely when it comes to connecting with these guys.
12:14Completely unrelated to what happened after yesterday's game in the media room.
12:20And you know what?
12:22We had some laughs, you know, talking about KT Leveson false starting on, like, three straight snaps.
12:28DeJuan Jones, you know, riding back on the struggle bus.
12:33Like, hey, Daryl, it's a team that doesn't have much depth.
12:36Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.
12:37The depth on this, I mean, they've gotten their doors blown off in two preseason games.
12:41And it's the preseason.
12:43These games don't count.
12:44You can't really read too much into them.
12:46Like, we were fitting Dorian Thompson Robinson for a gold jacket after a Hall of Fame game a couple of
12:52years ago.
12:52So it is what it is in the preseason a lot of times.
12:55But when you get your doors blown off like this in back-to-back preseason games, it just shows, like,
12:59you have no depth on this football team, really, on either side.
13:02Yeah, if they sustain any amount of significant long-term injuries, it's going to be problematic.
13:09By the way, I'm brought to you by Shabbing Jewelers, Cleveland's premier jewelry store.
13:14Yeah, just it was refreshing.
13:16We were having an off-the-air conversation, and we just were not talking about Deshaun Watson.
13:24That was the first time this morning that that had happened.
13:28And it gave me a little extra pep in my step because, you know, again, the Browns can't put this
13:34guy on the field.
13:35He's now unplayable.
13:36It's also not fair to Deshaun because he clearly feels—
13:41He's going through something mentally.
13:43Yeah.
13:43Like, there's that layer of it, too.
13:46And on the human side, it's understandable.
13:48Right.
13:48Okay, I'm going to set aside, okay, all the baggage and all that and what led us to this moment.
13:55From a human side, it's understandable why Deshaun feels the way he does.
13:59I can't imagine suffering an injury like he did.
14:03And listen, it was a vocal minority of fans at the time that cheered when he was carted off.
14:08It wasn't the whole stadium, okay?
14:11But unfortunately, in our world that we live in, usually the vocal minority is the one that tends to stand
14:18out and be heard the loudest.
14:19And it stood out to him.
14:20And it did.
14:20And in that moment, we knew that it did.
14:22He was crying.
14:23He put the towel over his head.
14:25Like, it was an emotional moment for him when they took him off that field in the first place.
14:29And it feels like, mentally, he clearly has not cleared that hurdle, even though Wednesday it was he told us
14:36that he didn't care.
14:37That was fake.
14:39Yeah, that was not true.
14:41Okay?
14:42You certainly cannot say that he took the money and ran.
14:47Okay?
14:48He worked really, really hard to rehab.
14:52He was able to practice for three weeks at the end of last season.
14:57He pushed for that.
14:58He got himself in a position where he could compete for this job.
15:02And he competed for the job.
15:06And so I understand.
15:07Like, all that work that you put in, and then you go out there and you're not playing well.
15:13And you have fans booing you because you're making 40-plus million dollars a year.
15:18And you can't even beat up.
15:19In the final year of the contract.
15:20Like, the Bills.
15:21And you can't.
15:22Third and fourth stringers.
15:23I mean, Daryl, he was 5 of 12 for 36 yards in an interception.
15:27I get it.
15:29It looked on the field like somebody unplayable.
15:33And then when you heard what he said after the game, there was just no way they could do this
15:38anymore.
15:38You can't put him on the field in that stadium.
15:41I made the smart-aleck comment earlier this morning.
15:46Well, I guess maybe Shador starts the home games and Deshaun starts the road games.
15:52I realize that wasn't wise for me to say because the Browns are crazy enough.
15:56They might actually do something like that.
15:57I'm a little joking, but I'm not.
16:00Because these are the Browns.
16:01And they will usually do the ridiculously unexpected.
16:05That's their history.
16:08But to be fair to Deshaun as a human being, and I kind of want to get into the respect
16:14in sports thing that Shador did bring up.
16:17Because I agree with him in some respects.
16:20We do forget that these are human beings.
16:23These players, yes, they make a ton of money.
16:25They got the fancy cars and the jewelry and the bling and all that kind of stuff.
16:30They are human beings.
16:33And a lot of times in our profession, and I actually criticize some of the NFL insiders because all they
16:43do is copy and paste whatever comes across the text thread as far as from an agent or a GM
16:50or a head coach or something.
16:52And by the way, a few of those NFL insiders have been caught copying and pasting because they've forgotten to
16:58delete parts of the text that they received that they should have deleted and stuff like that.
17:03Because it's so transactional and you don't get the human element.
17:09And so, like, I think that I have no problem with Shador sticking up for his teammate.
17:16I have no problem with Shador talking about, hey, we are human beings.
17:20We have, you know, we do have emotions and feelings and that.
17:24And his message was, imagine being in, you know, those shoes and having that done to you.
17:29You wouldn't like it type thing.
17:31I think that that was part of the message Shador was trying to get across.
17:34I get all that.
17:35But then there's the part of, well, there's a reason Deshaun's getting booed.
17:38And unfortunately, a lot of that has not a lot to do with football, which is what Deshaun pointed out.
17:44But you can't put this guy back on the field in your own stadium.
17:49It's not fair to Deshaun.
17:51And it's also not fair to your fans.
17:53And it's also not fair to that locker room.
17:56Right.
17:57Because that locker room is always going to have their teammates back and stick up for their teammate.
18:02And they should.
18:03Like, it's supposed to be a brotherhood.
18:04That's what makes a team.
18:06But then you're going to get into team versus the fans.
18:10And when you're trying to build a $2.6 billion stadium in which you would like to, in some spots,
18:17charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for PSLs for the best seats in the house.
18:23Yeah.
18:25That's not the toxicity you want right now.
18:27Hey, Daryl, guess what else you're trying to build?
18:30A culture.
18:30A culture.
18:31Yeah.
18:31And you're one of a new coaching staff that's never done this before.
18:34Todd Munkin, never been a head coach.
18:36Travis Schweitzer, never been an OC.
18:38New defensive coordinator.
18:40New special teams coach.
18:41You're trying to install this culture.
18:43You've got all of these blue chip young players that we should be excited about.
18:48If you're a Browns fan listening to us right now, you should be excited about Casey Concepcion and Denzel Boston.
18:53You should be excited about last year's rookie class.
18:56These are pieces that are going to play in that building that Daryl Ryder is discussing that they're putting up
19:02in 2029.
19:03These guys are going to be around for a minute here.
19:05But you want to install a winning culture, do you not?
19:09So be done with this.
19:11Be done with it.
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