Shedeur Sanders ... Good?????????????????

And lo, it came to pass that the son of one of the greatest players in pro football history, a young man who won Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year in 2024 by leading the conference in passing yards and touchdowns while finishing eighth in the Heisman voting, turned out to be good enough at football to play reasonably well in a preseason game against (mostly) backups for one of the NFL’s weakest franchises.

Who would have guessed?

Shedeur Sanders went 14-of-23 for 138 yards and two touchdowns in extended playing time against the Panthers on Friday. What did you expect? A five-interception meltdown? Did you think that Sanders would drive his Dodge TRX onto the field and start doing donuts before blithely running over his teammates?

It’s the preseason. Tanner McKee looked like a stack of concentrated Tom Bradys on Thursday night. Sanders was bound to look really good. Well, pretty good. Well, produce some pretty stats and cherry-pickable highlights, followed by the requisite runaway narrative.

What follows is the epic drive-by-drive saga of Sanders’ Friday night Götterdämmerung. The rough draft of this detailed account clocked in at just under 500 words. If that sounds excessive, keep in mind that some folks have analyzed Sanders’ performance in thousands of words and endless GIF threads as if they were studying the shower scene in Psycho. So bear with me.

Series 1 (vs. Panthers starters, though not Jaycee Horn or Derrick Brown): Glances a high-and-outside fastball off Diontae Johnson’s hands on a short slant. Hits Kaden Davis on a four-yard stick route on third-and-5.

Series 2 (Panthers starters): Screen to Trayveon Williams for 15 yards. Incomplete right sideline floater to Johnson, who gets tangled with his defender; ball lands about a yard out of bounds. Ten-yard scramble and slide for a first down. Play-action scramble to the left and lob over the head of Dylan Sampson. Touch pass to Jamari Thrash for 10 yards on third-and-12. Backwards maniacal chaos scramble and throwaway on fourth-and-2.

Series 3 (Mix of starters and backups): Quick strike to Brenden Bates for five yards. Screen to Thrash for a loss. Apparent miscommunication with Sal Cannella, who breaks inside while Sanders throws a flutterball toward the sideline.

Series 4 (After a muffed punt deep in Panthers territory): Rollout left, needle-threading Sea of Hands seven-yard touchdown to Davis, with several Panthers defenders jamming all the buttons on the PS5 controller to get a piece of the ball.

Series 5 (Panthers backups): Sideline hitch to Gage Lavadian for four yards. Incomplete pass nullified by penalty. Fastball for 19 yards to Lavardian on an in-route for a first down: Sanders delivered the ball with two defenders converging on him in the end zone; Lavardian’s defender slips on the play. Rollout-right-turned-scramble for 9 yards. Another outside fastball on a slant into traffic, off the hands of Chase Cota. Sneak for first down. Near interception by Corey Thornton, blanketing Lavadian over the middle. Wackadoodle scramble all over the Lord’s green earth on third-and-13; chased out of bounds by Nic Scourton for a loss of one.

Series 6 (Panthers backups): Flat pass for a loss to Ahmani Marshall. Deft scrambling alley-oop floater to Luke Floriea, who makes a one-handed catch-and-run. Twelve-yard touchdown strike to Davis; Sanders resets in the pocket and places a fastball perfectly, his best throw of the night.

Series 7 (Panthers rando brigade): Incomplete sideline route to a blanketed Cota. Scramble-and-sack where Sanders holds the ball too long against a heavy blitz.

Series 8 (Who the f**k are these people?): We have reached the quantum foam of preseason silliness; I won’t mention the penalties nullifying every other snap. A dangerous off-target wobbler into the flat after holding the ball too long in the end zone. Short completion to Cota on third-and-long. Are we done yet? Please say we’re done!

Series 9 (After a Browns interception): WE ARE NOT DONE. Smooth, accurate strike to a wide-open Bates for 25 yards. Flare pass for two yards near the goalline that Williams must field like a shallow popup in foul territory. Finally, Lavardian scores a touchdown on a jet sweep, and Snoop Huntley grabs a helmet.

Overall, Sanders was fine. He looked like himself: some touch-pass accuracy, plenty of creativity, lots of inconsistency, a troubling habit of cosplaying 1986 Randall Cunningham at the worst possible times. His performance can be spun for the better if we classify some of his outside-the-strike-zone heaters as dropped passes. It can be spun for the worse if we give Thornton an interception or gauge the risk factor of backwards loop-de-loo scrambles against real NFL starters.

But here’s the thing: