Browns quarterback Shedeur Sanders gets the final snap, the Saints get the troll

Shedeur Sanders handed the New Orleans Saints a receipt, and they cashed it after the final whistle: his own words as the caption, and a picture of Saints players borrowing his signature celebration. It made them the loudest trolls of the NFL weekend. What a caption cannot show is the part that matters for the Browns quarterback: the last snap in New Orleans was his.

Less than a year ago, Cleveland took the ball out of his hands on the play that decided a game. On Sunday it put the final throw on his arm, and he lost it. That is a harder kind of defeat than watching from the sideline. It is also the more useful one.

The troll started midweek. With Deshaun Watson in the concussion protocol and Sanders taking the starter’s reps, he was asked what he had seen on film of the Saints defense. He grinned. “Yeah, I’ve seen a lot. When I smile, just know that means something. I’m maturing. I’m maturing,” he said, as transcribed by Pro Football Network. After the 23-22 overtime win, the Saints used that line as the caption on their victory post, and ESPN put it at the top of its Week 9 trolls list.

New Orleans had been chewing on it for days. Head coach Kellen Moore showed the viral clip in a team meeting, according to ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler as relayed by ClutchPoints. Edge rusher Carl Granderson said: “I just can’t wait till Sunday to get out there, play fast and hit somebody, especially them.” Sanders answered before kickoff, in a clip shared by NFL insider Ari Meirov: “Everything I do up to this point is taken out of context. But I can’t be one to care what people say.” He called the reaction “another trick in the media.”

The snap Cleveland finally gave him

For 54 minutes nobody scored a touchdown. Then the game turned into a test of nerve, and Sanders kept passing it. On the first Cleveland snap after a Saints field goal, he found KC Concepcion behind cornerback Martin Emmerson Jr. for a 64-yard go-ahead score. When Audric Estime, claimed off waivers from Cleveland five days earlier, put New Orleans back in front with 58 seconds left, Sanders moved the Browns to the Saints 33, helped by a 30-yard completion to Jerry Jeudy, and Andre Szmyt tied it from 51 yards.

Tyler Shough opened overtime with a 15-yard touchdown pass to Juwan Johnson. Sanders answered with a short throw that Harold Fannin Jr. turned into a tackle-breaking 39-yard touchdown with a minute left. Head coach Todd Monken never thought about the extra point. “You’re not going to get the ball back, probably. So, you’re really saying tie or lose if you kick the extra point,” Monken said. “That’s not me. It was going to be win or lose.”

Granderson, the man who wanted to hit “especially them,” made sure it was lose. He forced Sanders to roll right on the two-point try, and the pass, intended for Denzel Boston, fell incomplete. Granderson finished with two of the Saints’ five sacks.

Set that snap next to one from last December. Against the Tennessee Titans, Sanders hit the same tight end, Fannin, for a touchdown with 1:03 left, and the Browns went for two to tie. Kevin Stefanski’s staff took Sanders off the field for a Wildcat play built around running back Quinshon Judkins. It failed, Cleveland lost 31-29, and the rookie said afterward: “If I’m out there any play, I wish I would always have the ball in my hand, but that’s not what football is.”

Same tight end, almost the same clock, the same do-or-die conversion. Under a new head coach, the answer to who holds the ball changed. Sanders got exactly what he asked for, and found out what it costs.

The quarterback on the other side

The opponent made the lesson sharper. In the 2025 draft, with New Orleans on the clock at No. 40, Sanders’ phone rang with a prank call from Jeff Ulbrich’s son and his friends posing as Saints general manager Mickey Loomis, as Dawg Pound Daily recounted. The Saints took Shough at that spot. Sanders went 144th, in the fifth round. Shough’s line on Sunday was 21 of 35 for 265 yards, plus the overtime winner.

Sanders went 19 of 31 for 297 yards with two touchdowns and no interceptions, while being sacked five times, in his first start of the season. He had thrown three passes all year before it. Afterward he described the ending in terms that answered his own midweek line better than any caption: “It was cool to even be able to get in that position. The moment never felt big, so that’s how I know I’m growing as a quarterback in this league.”

Cleveland, now 5-4 after two straight losses, hosts the Houston Texans next Sunday. Watson’s return depends on clearing the protocol. When Monken named Sanders the starter on Friday, Watson had not been cleared.

The Saints get to keep the caption. Cleveland keeps the answer it refused to look for last December: with a game riding on one throw, this staff now puts the ball in Sanders’ hands.

Tags: quarterbacks, New Orleans Saints, Cleveland Browns, Tyler Shough, Shedeur Sanders