Quiet tensions appear to be building in the Cleveland Browns quarterback room.
The franchise that finished with the joint-worst record in the NFL last season has stacked its roster ahead of 2025, with four signal-callers battling for a starting spot.
Veteran Joe Flacco has returned to Ohio and is the presumed Week 1 starter, with Kenny Pickett, Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders battling to be his back-up.
But while Sanders arrived as the 144th pick after an all-time slide in April’s draft, he is the one making the most noise.
The 23-year-old is impressing in practice, and has been touted as someone with the ‘star power’ to win the starting role by Week 8.
But he is also turning heads off the field too, and not for the right reasons.
Sanders has twice this month been cited by police for speeding.
He was accused of driving his Dodge TRX pickup truck 101mph in a 60 mph zone on a suburban Cleveland interstate earlier this week.
The rookie has the option to pay a $250 fine to waive the fourth-degree misdemeanor case, according to police.
But that wasn’t the first time he was pulled over, as a new report from Cleveland.com has surfaced, which claims he was also stopped by the Ohio State Patrol on June 5 in Brunswick Hills.
The Browns star was stopped for going 91 mph in a 65mph zone on that occasion.
Sanders has since offered an apology — which one reporter has questioned the sincerity of — and now appears to have been shown up by his rival rookie.
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While the news of his speeding offenses spread, the Browns held a youth football camp, where Gabriel and first-year linebacker Carson Schwesinger stopped by.
They were spotted coaching the kids and drawing up plays as they enjoyed their time out in the community.
Appearances like these are great PR for NFL stars, and Gabriel later re-shared photos and footage from the event with a five-word message.
“Winners win… all the time,” Gabriel wrote on his Instagram story.
It didn’t take long for fans to compare the actions of Cleveland’s two rookie quarterbacks, either.
“Meanwhile, Sanders is getting pulled over lol,” one person commented on the Browns’ post.
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“This is why he’s QB 1,” another said of Gabriel.
“And the Sanders drama begins…” a third wrote.
While some fans have been quick to criticize Sanders over his speeding offenses, Shannon Sharpe has come out to defend the young star.
Speaking on his Nightcap podcast, the NFL legend revealed that he has previously picked up similar tickets, and offered some advice.
“In my third year, I got stopped going 108 (mph) in a 60, then stopped doing 92 mph. I got two tickets in 10 minutes, so speeding, I get it,” Sharpe said.
“There’s something about speed and young people.
“But you’ve got to realize, you’re Shedeur Sanders. You know what comes with that name, you know who your father is. Things you do will probably get scrutinized a lot more than another 23-year-old would.
“Now, you’ve got two in a month, you’ve got to change that now.
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“Once I got those tickets, I changed… I had to slow it down.”
Sharpe went on to remind Sanders that he isn’t ‘invincible’ and that there are massive dangers that come with breaking the speed limit.
He said: “You don’t think anything can happen to you.
“For a lot of us, we’re athletes, and that’s what makes us who we are. The belief that we can do things other people can’t.
“The belief that what happens to someone that’s not an athlete, can’t happen to us, because we’re invincible.
“Nah, man.”
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