Shedeur Sanders’ NFL debut draws unprecedented number of viewers

Former Colorado Buffaloes star quarterback Shedeur Sanders has been the talk of the NFL preseason. He finally got his chance to make an impact last Friday against the Carolina Panthers, and fully took advantage of the opportunity.

In roughly three quarters of action, Sanders went 14-of-23 with 138 yards and two touchdowns. For anyone who watched the Buffaloes over the past two seasons, they were not surprised with the performance Sanders put up. He threaded the needle on a handful of throws and had a couple solid scrambles as he led the Browns offense up and down the field. However, he did have a couple of uncharacteristic misses on short throws and had a few of those weird scramble plays where he ran around in the backfield too much.

we're on the board!#CLEvsCAR on NFLN, @WEWS & NFL+ pic.twitter.com/TXCvXCbGWM

— Cleveland Browns (@Browns) August 8, 2025

Again, he did the same stuff at CU. This was not a shock to anybody who watched him play in college. The raw arm talent showed itself, and the mistakes he made are all things that can easily be tweaked with more experience in the NFL.

Given that he was the biggest story of the NFL Draft and there are plenty of people in the football world hoping for him to succeed, all eyes were on Friday night’s contest, and the TV ratings reflected that. Cleveland’s 30-10 victory drew an average audience of 2.2 million viewers, which made it the most-watched preseason game on NFL Network in a decade.

Just like he did in Boulder, he drew tons of eyes to a game that usually wouldn’t get close to that amount. The Buffs had the sixth-most total viewers in the country in 2024 and the 11th-most average viewers per game with Sanders leading an exciting offense. Eight games that Sanders played in with the Buffs rank in the top 18 of the program’s most-viewed games ever.

According to Program Insider, NFL Network’s viewership was second only to Fox News on Friday night. It was the most-watched primetime broadcast among adults aged 18-49 and 25-54, and was the third-most watched telecast in the primetime window overall.

In short, a Browns-Panthers preseason game dominated a primetime window that featured a handful of prominent TV shows and WWE’s patented Friday Night SmackDown.

Sanders will not get a chance to replicate this when the Browns take on the Eagles on Saturday, as he suffered an oblique injury early in Wednesday’s practice that will likely hold him out of that contest. He is now the fourth Browns quarterbacks dealing with an injury (Deshaun Watson, Kenny Pickett, Dillon Gabriel) in training camp.

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