Grading The Week: Shedeur Sanders needs to slow down. Or next ticket could be one-way flight out of Cleveland

Word to the wise, Shedeur Sanders: If you’re not careful, the next ticket you get will be a one-way flight out of Cleveland.

Fifth-round quarterbacks, by and large, aren’t legendary. They’re disposable.

You can count on one hand the NFL QBs drafted in the fifth round who’ve had a serious impact in the NFL since the 1970 merger. Mark Brunell and Steve Grogan are at the head of the class. But it’s a small room.

Dan Orlovsky? 2-10 as a starter. Troy Smith? 4-4. Josh Johnson? 1-8. Nathan Peterman? 1-4. Sam Howell? 5-13.

Possible? Yes. You’ve got to shine in limited time. Reps and contracts are stacked against you. Your play has to do the talking. Not your social media team. Not your agents.

Sanders, the record-setting former CU quarterback, fifth-round draft pick of the Browns and son of Buffs football coach Deion Sanders, made national headlines this past week when he was cited for driving 101 mph in a 60 mph zone through suburban Cleveland.

According to court records, it was Shedeur’s second citation this month, having been ticketed on June 5 for driving 91 mph in a 65. He faced $269 in fines for the first ticket and $519 for both tickets. Which, per USA Today, he paid.

If a lead foot is Sanders’ greatest sin, who are we in the Grading The Week (GTW) offices to cast stones? One GTW crew member vividly remembers writing a check to a suburban police force here in the metro for a fine so steep that it scarred him for about three months. And that’s the point of traffic laws — enforcement hits us where it hurts.

Shedeur’s human, like any one of us. Yet he’s also a celebrity QB who’s the son of a celebrity coach. Which means anything he does, good or bad, gets amplified and elevated. Right or wrong, Shedeur’s clickbait in cleats.

Surely, growing up as “Deion’s son,” he had to realize this. And had to realize that his behavioral standard, even with speed limits, is always going to be under scrutiny.

He also surely knows now, if he didn’t already, that he’s not in Boulder anymore.

Shedeur’s speeding tickets — D

The Browns are loving Shedeur’s jersey sales. Yet they’re not beholden to his famous father. Nor to the family’s media empire.

Cleveland is where QB careers go to die. Give skeptical Ohio media an inch, it’ll become a mile. You won’t control the narrative. They will.

And at the end of this week, the narrative was long-time football analysts like ex-NFL vet Ross Tucker saying the whispered, off-record stuff out loud: That front offices didn’t think Sanders’ talent justified the potential off-field headaches.

Online “estimators” pegged the former Buffs QB’s NIL worth at roughly $5 million as a senior. The Browns inked him to a four-year, $4.6-million rookie deal worth $1.16 million annually with a $447,000 signing bonus. Which actually proved an old joke levied at college football programs to be true: Coach Prime’s son took a pay cut to go pro.