Coming into week five of the season, Cleveland’s defence had conceded the fewest yards in the NFL – 222.5 per game – and were seventh for total sacks (11).
As expected, they gave Wentz and his depleted offensive line a testing time for most of the afternoon, recovering two Vikings fumbles and claiming three sacks.
But they were unable to get a stop on Minnesota when it mattered most, and simultaneously Cleveland’s offence stopped clicking.
The Browns opened the scoring with a Harold Fannin touchdown before a field goal edged them into a 10-7 lead at half-time, and a David Njoku touchdown put them back in front heading into the final quarter.
They failed to add the finishing touch, though, as over their final five possessions they earned just two first downs from 17 plays.
“We need to do a better job closing out,” said head coach Kevin Stefanski. “That’s an offensive thing, defence, special teams, coaches, players – you name it.”
The Browns now have a 1-4 record, with Sunday’s defeat showing that winning the turnover battle doesn’t always mean you win the game.
“At the end of the day, you’ve got to go out and get the win,” said defensive end Myles Garrett.
“That’s holding them to less points than you’ve got, and that’s not guaranteed with sacks or takeaways. You’ve got to show up when you need it.”
Now Shedeur Sanders has come up with an equally inventive way of responding without responding to reporters’ questions: silence.
Sure, the Cleveland Browns rookie moved his mouth and gestured when he was asked Wednesday about remaining the team’s No. 3 quarterback after fellow first-year QB Dillon Gabriel was promoted to starter.
But no actual words came out of his mouth.
Essentially, Sanders hit the mute button on himself — which is what made the response so brilliant.
Sanders was a star college quarterback for Colorado, playing for his father and NFL legend Deion Sanders, and was considered by some to be a first-round pick going into the 2025 draft. Instead, he dropped to the Browns in the fifth round (No. 144 overall) after Cleveland had already selected Gabriel out of Oregon in the third round.
For the first four weeks of the 2025 season, Gabriel was the Browns’ No. 2 quarterback and Sanders was No. 3, both behind 18-year veteran Joe Flacco.
But Flacco has been ineffective in leading Cleveland to a 1-3 start, which prompted the Browns to announce Wednesday that Gabriel will be their Week 5 starter. Flacco dropped to No. 2 with Sanders remaining at No. 3.
Later Wednesday in the Browns locker room, Sanders was asked by a reporter for his thoughts on not moving up on the depth chart. He smiled broadly and proceeded to give a voiceless answer. Reporters tried at least four more times to get Sanders to answer similar questions, eliciting only a similar pantomimed response.
Sanders’ behavior may have been in response to critical remarks made Monday by former NFL coach and current analyst Rex Ryan.
Last week, during an interview with ESPNCleveland, Sanders was asked about his feelings on being a backup quarterback in the NFL. During the course of the conversation, he made some comments — including “if you see the quarterback play in the league right now, I’m capable of playing better than that” and “a lot of teams would be playing me, but that’s not in God’s plan right now” — that rubbed Ryan the wrong way.
“This kid talks and he runs his mouth,” Ryan said days later on ESPN’s “Get Up.” “Like he said, ‘I can be a starting quarterback’ with his arms crossed like this. Get your a— in the front row and study and do all that. If I know, the whole league knows. Quit being an embarrassment that way. You’ve got the talent to be the quarterback, you should be. You should be embarrassed that you’re not the quarterback now.”
Shedeur Sanders had been considered by many to be a potential first-round pick before plummeting to the Browns at No. 144 overall, after Cleveland had already selected former Oregon quarterback Dillon Gabriel in the third round.
Earlier this month, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that the Baltimore Ravens had planned on drafting Sanders with the No. 141 overall pick until he let them know that he didn’t want to sit on a roster behind quarterback Lamar Jackson, who is a two-time league MVP and only 28 years old.
Last week, former NFL quarterback Cam Newton said on his podcast “4th&1 ” that he had heard that the Philadelphia Eagles had also wanted to draft Sanders at some point. Like the Ravens, however, Philadelphia also has a superstar quarterback who may not have even reached his prime in 27-year-old Jalen Hurts, who was named the MVP of Super Bowl LIX in February.
Deion Sanders, an NFL legend who coached his son at Colorado, seemed to confirm all of that during an appearance on Jason and Travis Kelce’s “New Heights” podcast, which was published Monday.
“Philly called us on draft day. They didn’t mention that. I just let a cat out of the bag,” Coach Prime told the Kelce brothers. “Philly called. Who [else] was it? Baltimore and the Browns. … I played for Baltimore, so me and [Ravens executive vice president of player development] Ozzie [Newsome] are cool … and he wanted to talk to Shedeur as well as he wanted to talk to me.
“I put Shedeur on the phone. And Shedeur — I don’t want to say it went, but how in the world can somebody fault him for saying or thinking, ‘Why in the world would I go back up Lamar for 10 more years?’ Like, who comes in with that mindset?”
Sanders added: “Where do these guys come from, that sit on these platforms and say, ‘Oh, you should have sat in behind and learned the game and been what they developed.’ When have the pros ever developed anybody? By the time you get to the NFL, they expect you to know what you need to do and to do it, or somebody else gonna get in there and do it.”
The 2011 Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee summed it up this way: “I’ve never sat on a bench and said, ‘Well, I learned a lot today.’ Who learns sitting on the bench?”
Sanders said he’s been preaching patience and preparation to his 23-year-old son, who currently sits behind 40-year-old veteran Joe Flacco and 24-year-old Gabriel on the Browns depth chart and has yet to see the field during the regular season.
“Be patient and be ready,” Sanders said he’s told Shedeur. “They call your name and you ain’t ready — we ain’t built like that. Sanders, we ain’t built like that. We always ready. We don’t have to get ready. And I want you to be patient. You don’t force nothing that ain’t that it may not be time [for].”
Sanders also said he has a feeling that patience will pay off for his son sooner rather than later.
“It’s coming up,” he said. “I got a prediction. I ain’t telling nobody. I got a feeling when it’s gonna go down. But it’s gonna go down this year. He gonna get a shot.”
Ferguson, a second-round draft pick from Oregon, made his debut after sitting out the first two preseason games because of a hamstring injury.
Ferguson was quiet the first quarter, but in the second he got a chance to show why the Rams selected him to be the heir apparent to veteran tight end Tyler Higbee.
Lining up in the left slot, the 6-foot-5, 247-pound Ferguson broke toward the sideline and made an over-the-shoulder catch for a 33-yard gain. Ferguson, not realizing he slid out of bounds, got to his feet and ran to the end zone.
“It was a big thing for me to have that first catch and be able to stretch the field a little bit, showcase some vertical speed,” Ferguson said during the television broadcast.
A few plays later, Ferguson lined up in the right slot, caught a short pass and turned it into a 15-yard gain.
That was all coach Sean McVay and his staff needed to see.
“You feel him,” McVay told reporters in Cleveland after the game. “He’s just got a nice pace to his game. Thought it was great to be able to get him out there.”
Ferguson showed he will be a factor in a tight end group that also includes Colby Parkinson and Davis Allen.
By Tuesday, NFL teams must cut their rosters to 53 players.
So the Rams’ third preseason game against the Cleveland Browns on Saturday in Cleveland is the final opportunity for coach Sean McVay and his staff — and other pro teams — to evaluate players.
“We have a good idea of what a handful of things look like,” McVay said of the roster, adding, “while also knowing that hey, things can change with the snap of a finger, if you will, just because of injuries and some of the uncertainty.
“I’m looking forward to watching a handful of guys compete because there are still some spots to be determined.”
Fans have reacted sharply to the return of Mrs Brown’s Boys, with many on social media branding it unfunny and questioning why it was ever commissioned
22:09, 01 Aug 2025Updated 22:09, 01 Aug 2025
Mrs Brown’s Boys viewers ‘beyond horrified’ as controversial show returns to BBC(Image: CREDIT LINE:Graeme Hunter / BBC Studios / BOC)
First aired in 2011, the comedy became a holiday fixture and enjoyed huge popularity in its early years. Its 2013 Christmas Day special drew 11.52 million viewers, making it one of the most-watched festive programmes of the decade.
The series has long divided audiences and critics, and was recently labelled the “worst ever BBC show” by some viewers on social media.
Comments on X during tonight’s broadcast included: “Worst programme in human history should’ve never been commissioned” and “Just speechless… I honestly don’t know one person who thinks this show is remotely funny.”
Another insisted: “This show needs to be axed asap. It’s not one bit funny.” Someone else fumed: “I actually hate this show with a passion and I’m Irish and from Dublin and I GET that kind of sense of humour.”
Agnes and the gang are back for a new series of Mrs Brown’s Boys(Image: CREDIT LINE:Graeme Hunter / BBC Studios / BOC)
In 2023, Mrs Brown’s Boys faced further scrutiny after O’Carroll made a racial slur during rehearsals for the Christmas special. Crew members were reportedly “shocked” by the remark and lodged complaints with BBC bosses.
The broadcaster suspended production and launched an investigation. O’Carroll later apologised, expressing “deep regret” over what he called a “clumsy attempt at a joke.”
Speaking publicly about the incident for the first time on Irish YouTube programme Conversations With Gerry Kelly, O’Carroll claimed his words had been “completely taken out of context.”
He also argued that the episode ultimately had a positive impact.
Brendan O’ Carroll plays Mrs Brown in the BBC sitcom(Image: BBC / BocPIX / Greame Hunter)
“The one thing that that incident did is give great awareness about racism, and great awareness about the BBC, they don’t take any messing… However, I think in the long run it was a good thing, because it got people talking about it.”
O’Carroll, who has won the National Television Award for Best Comedy six times for Mrs Brown’s Boys, has made it clear he is unfazed by negative feedback.
“The ones that love me, I love them, and the ones that don’t, f*** them,” he told Kelly, adding that those who dislike the show should simply “pick up the remote and change the station.”
Fans have hit out at the new series
Despite its dwindling audience, the series maintains a loyal fan base and continues to be a fixture in the BBC’s comedy line-up.
The new series, which began tonight, marks a fresh chapter for the show as it seeks to recapture some of its former success in the face of ongoing criticism.
Millie Bobby Brown was known for her role as Eleven in Netflix’s hit series Stranger Things which aired in 2016 – but she didn’t make her film debut until 2019
06:00, 19 Jun 2025Updated 06:06, 19 Jun 2025
The sequel to Millie Bobby Brown’s first ever film is airing on TV tonight(Image: Getty Images)
Stranger Things fans can prepare to watch Millie Bobby Brown on screen tonight – in a role worlds away from her portrayal as Eleven on the hit Netflix show.
Millie Bobby Brown rose to fame when she starred in the Netflix phenomenon, although it wasn’t the star’s first TV role. Before that, she had minor roles in television series including Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. However, it was her portrayal of Eleven that significantly boosted her career.
A huge name on TV, Millie didn’t make her film debut until 2019, when she made her feature film debut in in the Godzilla sequel, Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). Now, ITV is set to air the sequel to the film, Godzilla vs. Kong, which was released in 2021.
Millie Bobby Brown stars in the 2021 film(Image: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
The movie will air on ITV tomorrow night – with a late start time of 11.45, wrapping up at 1:20am on Friday morning. The feature length film will air straight after the late debate. The film has a run time of 1 hour and 53 minutes, but this will be slightly longer due to the adverts on the channel.
Millie reprised her role as Madison Russell, the daughter of Monarch’s Emma Russell (Vera Farmiga) and Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler).
Godzilla vs. Kong is the fourth instalment of the Monsterverse franchise, in which Millie’s character returned.
In the 2021 film, playing on ITV tonight, her character became the main human tied to the Godzilla storyline.
The movie is airing on ITV tonight(Image: WARNER BROS)
However, the Stranger Things star didn’t appear in the fifth instalment Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, and her character is not mentioned in the film.
During filming of Godzilla Vs. Kong, Millie’s co-stars Brian Tyree Henry and Julian Dennison opened up about how much fun she was on set.
“In between takes, [we] would literally sing our hearts out. It was a lot of fun,” said Henry. “She also likes to bark,” he told Metro.
“I don’t know if that was like a moment for her, like a period of a time where she was just into barking,” Dennison added. “But she would just bark like before a take, if she needed energy, she would just go, ‘woof, woof, woof, woof,’” he continued, although he revealed he had “seen worse from actors.”
Millie has continued to star on the big screen, with her latest movie, The Electric State released on Netflix earlier this year.
By Peter Brown Little, Brown Books for Young Readers: 48 pages, $20 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.
There are rare moments in the culture when a children’s book resonates with everyone. Parents who buy the book for their kids find themselves moved by a story that is not intended for them but somehow speaks to them. Peter Brown’s “The Wild Robot” is one such book.
A tender-hearted fable about a robot who washes ashore on a remote island and goes native, the 2016 middle-grade novel from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers has spawned two sequels and last year’s hit (and Oscar-nominated) adaptation from DreamWorks Animation, with book sales for the series topping 6.5 million worldwide. Brown has now created a picture book titled “The Wild Robot on the Island,” a gateway for those still too young to read the original work.
“This new book gave me a chance to create these big, colorful, detailed illustrations, while still maintaining the emotional tone of the novel,” says Brown, who is Zooming from the Maine home he shares with his wife and young son. “I’ve added some little moments that aren’t in the novel to give younger readers an introduction and when they’re ready, they can turn to the novel.”
“The Wild Robot on the Island” picture book is geared for a younger audience than Brown’s earlier children’s novels featuring Roz the robot and friends.
(Peter Brown / Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
The new book’s mostly-pictures-with-some-words approach is a return to Brown’s earlier work when he was creating charming fables for toddlers about our sometimes fraught, sometimes empathetic attitude toward nature. In 2009’s “The Curious Garden,” a boy encounters a patch of wildflowers and grass sprouting from an abandoned railway and decides to cultivate it into a garden, while 2013’s “Mr. Tiger Goes Wild” finds the title character longing to escape from the conventions of a world where animals no longer run free. This push and pull between wilderness and civilized life, or wildness versus timidity, has preoccupied Brown for the duration of his career, and it is what brought Brown to his robot.
“I was thinking about nature in unlikely places, and the relationships between natural and unnatural things,” says Brown, a New Jersey native who studied at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design. “And that led to the idea of a robot in a tree.” Brown drew a single picture of a robot standing on the branch of a giant pine tree, then put it aside while he produced other work. But the image wouldn’t let him go: “Every couple of months, I would think about that robot.”
Brown began researching robots and robotics, and slowly the story gestated in his mind. “Themes began to emerge,” says Brown. “Mainly, the idea of this robot becoming almost more wild and natural than a person could be. That was so fascinating to me that I wanted to let this thing breathe and see where it took me.”
Brown knew the involved narrative he had imagined wouldn’t work in picture book form; he needed to write his story as a novel, which would be new territory for him. “When I pitched the idea to my editor, she basically said, ‘Pump your brakes,’ ” says Brown. “If I was going to write, I had to include illustrations as well. The publisher thought it was a bit of a risk. They wanted pictures in order to sell it, because of what I had done in the past.”
(Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
Brown locked himself away out in the wilds of Maine, in a cabin with no Wi-Fi, and got down to it. “I was nervous, and my editor wasn’t sure, either,” says Brown, who cites Kurt Vonnegut as a literary influence. “I realized there was no other option but for me to do it. And once I got into it, I had a blast.”
Like all great fables, Brown’s story is deceptively simple. A cargo ship full of robots goes down in the middle of the ocean. Some of these robots, still packed in their boxes, wash ashore on a remote island. A family of otters opens one such box, which turns out to be Roz, Brown’s wild robot. As Roz explores this strange new world, she encounters angry bears, a loquacious squirrel and industrious beavers, who regard her as a malevolent force. But the robot’s confusion, and the animal’s hostility, soon dissolve into a mutual understanding. Roz is the reader’s proxy, an innocent who acclimates to the complex rhythms of the natural world. Eventually she is subsumed into this alien universe, a creature of nature who allows birds to roost on her chromium shoulder.
“Roz has been programmed to learn, but her creators, the men who built her, don’t expect her to learn in this particular way,” says Brown. “And so she uses that learning ability to mimic the animals’ behavior and learns how to communicate with them. Roz is the embodiment of the value of learning, and part of that is adapting, changing, growing.”
The story isn’t always a rosy fairy tale. There are predators on the island; animals are eaten for sustenance. Real life, in short, rears its ugly head. “It gets tricky. Life is complicated, right?”, says Brown. “But thanks to Roz’s influence, all the animals discover how they are all a part of this interconnected community.”
Roz adopts an abandoned gosling that she names Brightbill, and the man-made machine is now a mother, flooded with compassion for her young charge. Their relationship is the emotional core of Brown’s series. At a time when the world is grappling with the increasing presence of robotic technology in everyday life, Brown offers an alternative view: What if we can create robots that are capable of benevolence and empathy? Roz reminds us of our own humanity, our capacity to love and feel deeply. This is why “The Wild Robot” isn’t just a kid’s book. It is in fact one of the most insightful novels about our present techno-anxious moment, camouflaged as a children’s book.
The author kept his underlying fable intact in the new “Wild Robot” picture book.
(Peter Brown / Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
“Technology is a double-edged sword,” says Brown. “There’s obviously a lot of good that is happening, and will continue to happen, but in the wrong hands it can be dangerous.” He mentions Jonathan Haidt’s bestselling book “The Anxious Generation,” and Haidt’s prescriptions for restricting internet use among children, which Brown endorses. “I don’t have a lot of answers, but I just think we need to reinvest in our own humanity,” he says. “We have to make sure things are going in the right direction.”
In subsequent books, the outside world impinges on Roz’s idyll. “The Wild Robot Escapes” finds Roz navigating the dangers of urban life and humans with guns, while a toxic tide in “The Wild Robot Protects” leaves the animals scrambling for ever more scarce resources. None of this is pedantic, nor is it puffed up with moral outrage. Brown knows children can spot such flaws a mile away. Like all great adventure tales, Brown’s “Wild Robot” stories embrace the wild world in all of its splendor, without ever flinching away from it.
“In the books, I just wanted to acknowledge that the world is complicated, and that people we think are bad aren’t necessarily so,” says Brown, who is currently writing the fourth novel in the “Wild Robot” series. “Behind every bad action is a really complicated story, and I think kids can handle that. They want to be told the truth about things, they want to grapple with the tough parts of life.”
The Glasgow club say they are “surprised” by the charge over Brown’s comments and will “continue to challenge any action we consider to be unfair or disproportionate”.
The SFA rule states: “A club or recognised football body which publishes, distributes, issues, sells or authorises a third party to publish, distribute, issue or sell a match programme or any other publication or audio/visual material of any description in any media now existing or hereinafter invented, including but not limited to the Internet, social networking or micro-blogging sites, shall ensure that any such publications or audio/visual material does not contain any criticism of any match official calculated to indicate bias or incompetence on the part of such match official or to impinge upon his character.”
Rangers note that four out of five members of the SFA’s Key Match Incident Panel deemed the decision to be incorrect, adding that they have “serious concerns about the Scottish FA’s selective enforcement and inconsistency”.
“That finding helps explain the nature of a spontaneous emotional comment, delivered during a highly charged moment and immediately challenged live on air,” Rangers add.
“We have highlighted multiple examples of similar or stronger remarks made elsewhere in Scottish football that have led to no charges or sanctions.
“While we remain committed to maintaining high standards, we will continue to challenge any action we consider to be unfair or disproportionate.”
The Television Academy first embraced Sterling K. Brown nine years ago and has kept him in a loose side hug ever since. Brown’s a contender for lead actor in a drama for his role as a Secret Service agent in “Paradise,” a Hulu thriller that reunites Brown with “This Is Us” creator Dan Fogelman.
10
Emmy nominations Brown has received across …
6
Different projects, including for narrator (“Lincoln: Divided We Stand”) and character voice-over (“Invincible”).
2
Brown’s first two wins came in back-to-back years — for supporting actor in a limited series in 2016, as prosecutor Christopher Darden in “The People v. O.J. Simpson,” and lead actor in a drama series in 2017 for his performance as Randall in NBC’s big-feelings family saga “This Is Us.”
3 x 2
Brown has received two nominations in a single year three times: 2018, 2020, 2021.
4
The Screen Actors Guild Awards also love Brown, who has won four times from 11 nominations, including …
2019
Twice in one year as part of both the winning film (“Black Panther”) and TV drama (“This Is Us”) ensembles.
1
Brown received his first Oscar nomination in 2024 for his supporting role as the hedonistic, hurting brother of Jeffrey Wright’s novelist in “American Fiction.”
