Rich: What Browns QB Shedeur Sanders Has Done to Silence His Critics

Shedeur Sanders lost the job, watched the man who beat him get booed by his own stadium, and then stepped to a microphone and defended him.

Rich wanted to end the hour on that, and it is easy to understand why.

The book on Sanders coming into the league was that he was image first, brand second, football somewhere after. He is Deion's kid, the story went, and that is the only reason anyone is paying attention. Rich has never bought it, and Monday handed him the cleanest evidence yet.

Asked about Deshaun Watson being booed and about Watson's reaction to it, Sanders did not take the opening.

"In general, I don't appreciate that at all," Sanders said. "Just regardless competition, we all human beings. And I think we all need to understand that, in this room, too. We all humans. So it's like, I don't really do things to humans I won't really want done to me."

He kept going, and it kept getting more generous. He said he tries to make sure everybody around him is comfortable, and acknowledged that the way he is can sometimes make people uncomfortable. He thanked the fans for showing up. Then he drew the line where an adult draws it.

"However y'all feel about the situation, about what Deshaun, about everything, still, I think it's more about a bigger purpose than just respect," Sanders said. "It's just a respect thing that I feel like should be there because we all out there trying to do our best and trying to serve the franchise the best way possible."

"I thought he's supposed to be that person who's taking a selfie while doing that," Rich said.

The reversal is the whole point. "Everything that he has done since he was born into this league has been exactly counter to what everybody thought he was," Rich said. And then he named the source, which is the part critics never see coming. The smiling at the media, the we-are-all-human framing, the do-unto-others instinct, the insistence on respect. That is his dad. It is also him.

Consider the leverage Sanders declined to use. The fan base likes him more than the other guy. The fan base believes in him more than the other guy. And the other guy got the job anyway.

Rich walked through what an actually immature player does with that. He takes a shovel and makes the hole deeper. He takes the dirt and buries the man in it. Sanders did the exact opposite.

"He defended him," Rich said. "And I think it deserves to be pointed out."

The show did not pretend the record is spotless. The miming incident came up as the one genuine misstep, and the panel went back and forth on it. Sanders was not the leader of the team at that point, one argument went. If you want to prove you can be, came the answer, that is not how you go about it. Everyone agreed it was not the move.

But the counterpoint wrote itself. We are all human. He was being human.

Then came a detail from the archives that reframes the whole "grown too fast" critique. Back when Deion had a reality show with the kids on it, Sanders at 12 or 13 had a nickname along the lines of Grown, because of how he thought and carried himself.

The meritocracy argument closed it out. If Sanders were more talented, the reasoning goes, he would have the job. Maybe. Chris's Overreaction Monday take was that Sanders starts more games this season than Watson anyway, and Rich would not call that an overreaction, because it is entirely possible.