Stephen A. Smith Says Coach Pulled Shedeur Sanders to ‘Save Him From Himself'

Shedeur Sanders, the Browns' third or fourth-string quarterback, struggled in the second half of the team's final preseason game over the weekend against the Rams. It went so badly for Sanders that he was pulled late in the game to give Tyler "Snoop" Huntley a chance to orchestrate the game-winning drive. Huntley capitalized thanks to a litany of penalties on the Rams and was then released on Monday morning.

Head coach Kevin Stefanski's handling of the Sanders situation was the main topic on First Take today. When asked if Stefanski deserved criticism for how he had handled things, Stephen A. Smith said no and turned his attention to the poor play of Sanders.

"Shedeur Sanders looked very, very bad," said Smith. "Very bad. There’s no way around that against third and fourth stringers. When you talk about 11 dropbacks, five sacks, just three completions, four three-and-outs in five series. One fumble recovered by a teammate."

Basically, Smith explained, it was everything people had worried about with Sanders coming out of college and that the coach stepped in for his own good.

"I think when you perform that badly, it doesn’t mean that it’s the end," said Smith. "It doesn’t mean he can’t play in the NFL. It means that he had a very, very bad afternoon. But its as a very bad afternoon. And because it was a very bad afternoon, one can easily argue that Kevin Stefanski was trying to save him from himself. Whether you agree or disagree I think that he’s in a position where he can make that argument legitimately and it would be very difficult to argue with based on what we saw."

Only 10 days until the regular season starts.