The Browns’ quarterback situation has all the weird drama of an episode of Love Island, and Shedeur Sanders wanted to make sure he was front-and-center. Sanders was asked how he felt about his role as QB3 on the depth chart as Cleveland made the change from Joe Flacco to rookie Dillon Gabriel as starter, and there were a million ways he could have handled the question.

Sanders picked the million-and-first way, by pantomiming all his answers.

Like so much of the drama surrounding Sanders it’s consistently the subtext with how he responds to the media. While there are smiles, and he appears to be having a good time — there’s definitely an underlying tone behind is silence. Sanders has been known to put his foot in his mouth, which is one of the reasons he precipitously fell in the NFL Draft, and playing games like this only opens the door for people to make assumptions.

Had Shedeur said something along the lines of “I’m happy for Dillon. Going to keep working hard, getting better, and helping this team however possible,” then there would be no headlines today. It’s the boring, stock answer a depth quarterback is supposed to give in these situations. The silence, however … well, that could mean anything.

Is this Sanders’ way of saying he’s not going to give his real thoughts on Gabriel getting the nod over him? Is he making a statement about the team wanting him to say less and not be the center of attention? Is this quite literally a silent protest to being locked at QB3 on the chart when he thinks he should be much higher?

We’re forced to guess, because Sanders wants us to. There’s unquestionably an element to this as well that Sanders feels like anything he says will get twisted and weaponized, but there comes a time where there are roughly 1,700 players in the NFL, and nobody else gets this kind of scrutiny. At some point it comes back to the player’s actions in the past, not the media asking a fairly benign question about his place on the depth chart.

There is an unquestioned reality here that Sanders has to learn the media game, and it’s stunning he’s so bad at this considering his father’s experience for years in the limelight. Even Deion knew when to cover up the personality so he wouldn’t make waves, but his son just doesn’t quite get that yet.

At best this comes off as extremely bizarre behavior. At worst people are going to assume he’s being quieted and wants to say something. It’s just an unforced error that didn’t need to happen.