Deion Sanders Jr. record Shedeur back injury amid Kevin Stefanski's refusal to name Coach Prime's son as Browns QB1


Cleveland Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski is still reluctant to start Shedeur Sanders, even though he had teased doing so after the bye week during a live broadcast. This reluctance, however, can be attributed to a back injury, with which Deion Sanders Jr. confirmed his brother was struggling before the Week 8 game at the New England Patriots in a video Thursday:

“His back was checked all last week. It was actually a problem.”

That development came amid concerns about the nature and timing of the announcement that Sanders had an injury. It came Saturday, something Anthony Lima of 92.3 The Fan fumed about the quarterback's historic media savvy:

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Stefanski, for his part, is not thinking about a quarterback change, at least in the short term. And while there has been a lot of outrage over the continued shutdown, one person who believes otherwise is ESPN analyst Matt Miller. In an interview with EssentiallySports' Andrew Whitelaw, he said:

“I think if (Shedeur) was worthy of starting, Kevin Stefanski would start him. … So until we have any evidence that Sanders should be playing over Gabriel, I think you've got to trust the guys that are out there every day doing the job.”

Kevin Stefanski could be relinquishing play-calling duties amid the Browns' struggles

The quarterback situation may not be the only area where Kevin Stefanski makes a change, however. There's also the question of whether he can still call plays competently.

In a press conference Monday, he said about the possibility of handing those duties over to offensive coordinator Tommy Rees for the Week 10 game at the New York Jets, just as he had done last season with Ken Dorsey:

“I need to spend time on all those things, and I think positionally we've got to be better and we've got to put our players in better spots, if you will. So we'll look at everything this week and make a decision coming out of the bye.”

And for Cleveland.com's Mary Kay Cabot, that may be the change that the brown need to end their offensive slump:

“There's not much else that can be done right now to fix that, unless the Browns are willing to add a good veteran receiver and find an experienced, veteran quarterback who could do better than rookie Dillon Gabriel.”

Kickoff for the aforementioned game is at 1:00 PM ET on CBS.