After Browns quarterback Shedeur Sanders made an impressive NFL debut in Cleveland’s preseason opener, he had a largely playful message for veteran reporter Tony Grossi.
In a video from inside the bowels of Bank of America Stadium, Sanders is seen saying this to Grossi: “Tony, I be hoping you got something positive to say about me. You only say negative stuff about me. And I’m like, ‘I ain’t do nothing to you.’”
Sanders has a smiling, friendly demeanor throughout most of the exchange. He’s laughing a times during the clip. He’s more exasperated than irritated, far more pleading than intimidating.
Grossi’s response is hard to hear.
“I ain’t seen nothing positive you ever said,” Sanders later says. The 28-second clip ends with Sanders saying to Grossi, “What I do? What I do to you, Tony?”
Sanders handled the situation in a mature way. (He refrained, for instance, from dousing Grossi with ice water. Twice.) And it remains to be seen how that approach will work on Grossi, who has a history of being pointed in his criticisms of Browns-related figures.
Indeed, a remark about Baker Mayfield got Grossi suspended in 2020. Either years before that, an accidental tweet calling former Browns owner Randy Lerner a “pathetic figure” and “the most irrelevant billionaire in the world” got Grossi reassigned from the Browns beat at the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
