cleveland
CLEVELAND, Ohio It happens every offseason.
A name gets dropped, a rumor catches fire and suddenly a perfectly rational situation starts looking like chaos.
This week, it was Shedeur Sanders turn.
On the latest Orange and Brown Talk podcast, Browns beat reporter Mary Kay Cabot and host Dan Labbe tackled the rumor head-on after ESPN Clevelands Tony Rizzo went on the air suggesting that the Browns might be fielding trade calls for their rookie quarterback.
As youd expect with anything involving Shedeur Sanders, the story grew legs almost immediately.
So is there anything to it? The short answer, according to both hosts: not right now.
Not even close.
I just dont see why they would even think about doing that right now when theyre trying to determine if he can be their starting quarterback, Cabot said flatly, cutting through the noise with the kind of clarity that comes from actually being inside the Browns building regularly.
Lets start with the most basic piece of logic.
The Browns spent the entire spring watching him close the gap on Deshaun Watson during OTAs and mandatory minicamp.
Head coach Todd Monken has repeatedly refused to name a starter, insisting the competition is genuinely open.
Why in the world would a team in that position be actively shopping one of the two competitors before training camp even opens? They wouldnt.
And theyre probably not.
What Cabot and Labbe suggest is far more mundane and far more consistent with how NFL front offices actually operate.
General managers talk to each other constantly.
Andrew Berry, Clevelands GM, is known as an aggressive wheeler-dealer who is always working the phones.
When teams call about one player, conversations naturally drift to other names on the roster.
A team wondering about Browns depth might casually ask, Hey, what are you going to do with Shedeur if Watson wins the job? Thats not a trade negotiation.
Thats due diligence.
Thats Tuesday.
Sometimes you have conversations about other players and in the course of those conversations, Hey, what do you guys think is going to happen with Shedeur? Cabot explained on the podcast.
Those kinds of things happen when youre talking to different teams.
Theres also the question of return value.
Even if the Browns were considering a trade, which both hosts agree they arent, the market for Sanders right now is not good.
Hes unproven at the NFL level, sitting in a two-man competition with Watson.
What does that fetch? I think right now it wouldnt make sense to me to trade him for like a 6th-round pick if you thought he still had a chance to maybe win this starting quarterback job," Labbe said.
A sixth-round pick.
For a player who outplayed a veteran quarterback in mandatory minicamp and who the organization clearly still believes in.
Thats not a trade, thats a fire sale.
And the Browns are nowhere near that moment.
Theres another layer to this that the podcast explored: depth.
Trading Sanders would leave Cleveland dangerously thin at quarterback behind Watson, who is returning from two Achilles repairs and significant shoulder surgery.
The backup room behind a quarterback with that injury history is not the place to cut corners.
The scenario where a trade makes more sense, and Cabot and Labbe acknowledge this openly, is after training camp, if Sanders clearly loses the competition and the Sanders family signals they want out.
Even then, the Browns would have to weigh whether theyd rather have a capable, motivated backup in a room where Watsons availability is genuinely uncertain.
Bottom line: this is a story that could become real later in the summer.
But right now? Its much ado about nothing, to borrow Cabots own words from the pod.
For the full breakdown of where the Shedeur Sanders trade rumors actually came from, what a realistic trade might look like down the road and why Clevelands quarterback room is more complicated than it looks, listen to the full episode of Orange and Brown Talk on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube.