Cleveland Browns backup quarterback Shedeur Sanders is arguably one of the NFL’s most popular players.
Sanders has a large fan base, including some who are also actually Browns fans, a famous last name, and, despite limited success on the field as a rookie, his jersey ranked No. 5 in sales among all NFL players heading into the season.
Although Sanders has seen the field for only one play this season, thanks to quarterback Deshaun Watson’s mini-resurgence, Sanders’ appeal has not waned.
Even though
his career has gotten off to a slow start, Sanders has joined franchise legend and Hall of Famer Jim Brown in one category, as they may be the only Cleveland professional athletes to have a featured centerfold in Cosmopolitan magazine.
Brown was featured in 1974, and now, 52 years later, Sanders is the focus of an article in the October issue titled Shedeur Sanders Thinks You’ve Got Him All Wrong.
The opening paragraph of the story lays out part of what makes Sanders so appealing:
Shedeur Sanders is football royalty. So it only makes sense that after this photo shoot in a sweltering Brooklyn house, he’s lying out on a brown antique couch in the basement in nothing but his boxers, posed like Adonis. He laughs with a full-faced smile when I ask if he’d like a second to get dressed before we start the interview. “Nah, it’s alright,” he says, flashing a pair of pearly whites that are almost blinding. In an hour, he’s headed to the 2026 ESPYs, and there’s no time to waste—not even for a shirt or pants. And I’m positive the women of TikTok who spend their time making fan edits of the rising 24-year-old NFL quarterback, calling him “’90s fine,” would be quite excited to be in my position.
All kidding aside, the article is a good look at who Sanders is off the field: a likeable 24-year-old working to figure out who he is and who he wants to be in this world:
“I wish people understood me more as a human being. I don’t think a lot of people really know me. I’m just now starting to understand that. You hear a lot of things online, but every encounter I have in person, people end up saying, ‘Oh, wow, he’s actually a great guy.’ Why would you think I’m a bad guy? So I’ve been looking at things a lot more lately, like, ‘Why would people think this?’ It’s not something I’m going to put [solely] on myself, but I do want to fix that. I want to connect with more people, so they can meet me and see the truth.”
Basically, Sanders is like any other 20-something starting on the next chapter of their life; it’s just that he is doing it while playing for the city’s No. 1 team and in the spotlight of the country’s biggest sport.
Which can’t be easy, if if you are Shedeur Sanders.
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