Primarily, the whole lot went fallacious for Shedeur Sanders within the NFL draft and within the months main as much as it — a lot of it seems to be his personal fault.
In keeping with CBS Sports activities’ Jonathan Jones, Sanders would purposely do poorly in interviews with sure groups that he wasn’t as concerned with being drafted to.
“At some of those [combine] meetings with certain teams that maybe Shedeur Sanders didn’t really want to go to … I was told that he more or less sandbagged in those interviews,” Jones mentioned.
“I don’t know if he didn’t take them seriously, what it was, but he did not give it his all in some of those interviews,” he added. “Rubbed some teams the wrong way.”
A 12 months in the past, the same sentiment was echoed by his father, Deion Sanders.
“I know where I want them to go,” Deion mentioned in March 2024, referring to his sons Shedeur and Shilo. “There’s certain cities where it ain’t going to happen … It’s going to be an Eli [Manning]. We ain’t doing that.”
Sanders primarily had just a few main suitors coming into the draft: the Giants, Saints, Steelers and Raiders. All of those groups handed on Sanders within the first spherical. Then the second. And the third. And the fourth.
Sanders slipped to the fifth spherical, the place he wound up because the sixth quarterback off the board when he was drafted by the Cleveland Browns — who had already taken the far much less extremely touted quarterback Dillon Gabriel within the third spherical.
You don’t must be an skilled to say that Sanders doubtless rated earlier than the draft as a greater quarterback than Gabriel — and doubtless each quarterback drafted forward of him apart from Cam Ward— however Sanders got here with a special baggage.
“Shedeur Sanders was clearly talented enough to be selected in the top five when it comes to quarterbacks, he was a top-five quarterback in this year’s class,” Jones mentioned. “The difference here is how he and those around him handled the draft process.”
From the “sandbagged” mix interviews and onward, Sanders’ mishandling of himself didn’t cease.
“Then you continue, where it was a pro day that, frankly, was just sort of average,” Jones mentioned. “He gets his jersey number retired at Colorado — something that’s really just not seen in major college football — how quickly it was done and considering the lack of accolades in his career.”
Since groups didn’t view Sanders as an otherworldly expertise, they in the end determined that he wasn’t definitely worth the headache.
“All of these things began to add up for teams,” Jones added.
Sanders’ beautiful slip within the draft will go down in historical past — and can doubtless function a lesson to those that come after him.
“This is clearly a way for the NFL and its teams to let him and anyone else after him know: you can’t comport yourself in this way moving forward,” Jones mentioned.
