Andrew Berry: Shedeur Sanders' focus is making the team and earning a role

The Browns' rookie minicamp got started on Friday, giving the club its first opportunity to see the 2025 draftees on the field — including fifth-round pick Shedeur Sanders.

While Sanders and third-round QB Dillon Gabriel are scheduled to address the media on Saturday, General Manager Andrew Berry talked about the former Colorado QB in an interview with Ken Carman and Anthony Lima on 92.3 The Fan in Cleveland on Friday morning.

During the segment, Berry said multiple times that Sanders' focus should be on two things: making the team and earning a role. And that's the same for all rookies, even though Sanders is more popular as a fifth-round pick than anyone else in the club's draft class.

"I know it leads to a lot of conversation and interest in the media and externally — and understandably so," Berry said. "But for us, we always talk about tuning out the external issues. That doesn’t really matter in terms of how we work, how we prepare. And in terms of Shedeur, his big thing is making the team and earning a role.

"Listening to the outside noise does nothing to help accomplish those."

Berry noted that the Browns have structured their rookie minicamp a bit differently so that both Sanders and Gabriel can get quality reps out of it. But Berry added that it's more about what the two rookies can get out of the next four months, which head coach Kevin Stefanski and offensive coordinator Tommy Rees have built a plan for.

"We’ve typically taken four quarterbacks into camp," Berry said. "Now, the rep distribution had always been maybe a little bit different because we had a clearer or at least entrenched starter. And so this year, obviously, is a little bit different. But I think they’ve done a really nice job of designing the offseason programing and I think the plans that we have for training camp and the preseason, there will be plenty of reps to evaluate all four of those passers."

The Browns also have Joe Facco and Kenny Pickett as healthy quarterbacks on their roster, so it will be interesting to see how they end up distributing reps throughout the rest of the offseason program and training camp.

But when asked what specific elements the Browns want to challenge Sanders with, Berry pivoted back to the entire class of first-year players.

"Yeah, I’d say it’s less about challenging him specifically and more about our rookies in general," Berry said. "They’ve all got to come up the learning curve quickly. They’re in a new system, they’re in a new environment, they’re learning new skills kind of on the job. And Kevin’s message to them last night during the first team meeting was, hey, your focus is — I’m going to sound like a broken record here — but it’s to make the team, nobody here has made the team yet. So it’s making the team. And then after that, it’s earning a role. That’s the same thing for Shedeur."