The Colorado quarterback approached the draft process like a sure-fire first-round pick. After an unprecedented free fall, it was clear the NFL’s perception of Sanders was vastly different.
If you’re seeking an explanation for Shedeur Sanders falling out of the first round of the 2025 NFL draft, look no further than his college tape. The reasoning for Sanders tumbling all the way to the third day of the draft until the Browns mercifully took him in the fifth round is quite a bit more nuanced. At some point during Day 2—probably when Cleveland used the 94th pick on Oregon’s very Stetson Bennett–coded quarterback Dillon Gabriel—Sanders slaloming down the draft board was no longer a reflection of his football ability. He was the 27th-ranked player on The Ringer’s big board, 41st for Yahoo! Sports, no. 34 on The Athletic’s board. NFL Media’s Daniel Jeremiah, who’s got sources all over the league, had him as the 20th-best player in the class just days before things kicked off in Green Bay.
The Colorado quarterback may not have been a consensus first-round prospect, but the draft community was unanimous that he was worthy of being an early second-round selection at worst. He fell all the way to the fifth round, when the Browns—who passed over him six times—finally took him with pick 144 on Saturday, dropping him into what looks like the league’s weirdest quarterback room with Gabriel, Kenny Pickett, Joe Flacco and the injured Deshaun Watson. It was an unprecedented freefall, one that dominated the discourse across all three days of draft coverage on multiple television networks and on social media. Initial disbelief from analysts like ESPN’s Mel Kiper on Thursday turned to utter disgust on Friday night, and ultimately pity on Saturday afternoon.
With a vast disconnect between when we in the media thought Sanders would get picked and where the Browns ultimately drafted him, there are plenty of blanks that need to be filled in order to fully understand what happened.
Sure enough, there are a ton of anonymous quotes from the pre-draft process to fill them. In March, NFL reporter Josina Anderson reported from the combine that an NFL assistant coach described Sanders as “brash” and “unprofessional.” More recently, NFL Media’s Tom Pelissero reported that one longtime NFL assistant coach said Sanders gave “the worst formal interview I’ve ever been in in my life” and called him “entitled,” while CBS Sports’ Jonathan Jones reported that Sanders “sandbagged” his interviews, perhaps to keep certain teams from drafting him.
In this more enlightened age of draft coverage, these anonymous attacks on a prospect’s personality are typically dismissed as pre-draft, dog-whistling nonsense; however, with Sanders, they fit the narrative that had already been established during his two years playing under his father at Colorado, where Shedeur and the entire Sanders family seemed to embrace playing the role of the villain.
But Sanders being a bad hang doesn’t fully explain him dropping to the fifth round. This is the NFL, which has its fair share of unlikeable characters across the league. And teams historically haven’t let character questions stop them from taking a talented player high in the draft if they believe he can play. Sanders, it’s worth highlighting, has never been in any sort of real trouble, and the reviews from people brave enough to speak on the record about him were more glowing. Colorado offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur, who served as head coach for the Giants and Browns, called Sanders “a wonderfully unique human being” with “a big heart.” Titans coach Brian Callahan, who eventually used the top pick on Cam Ward, called Sanders “poised” and “mature” after meeting with him at the Shrine Bowl in February. Browns GM Andrew Berry called Sanders an “impressive young man” after passing on the 23-year-old QB on Friday night, before Berry used the 144th pick on him the next day.
If Shedeur’s slide was strictly a matter of talent and film evaluation, we wouldn’t have needed to wait until the draft was underway to realize he wasn’t going to be a top pick. The big boards across the internet would have reflected that. The same is true of his perceived personality flaws, which were—in many cases—already baked into those pre-draft projections. Sanders’s talent level has not changed over the past few months, and it’s unlikely NFL teams altered their on-field evaluation, as the 23-year-old quarterback didn’t participate in draft season’s tentpole events. The issue that ultimately led to the biggest slide in league history was the wide disconnect between how the league viewed him as a prospect and how he viewed himself.
If Team Prime had a more realistic view of Shedeur’s prospects, they may have taken a different approach to the pre-draft process—one that, with hindsight, we can now say was built on the misguided notion that Sanders was one of the top prospects in the class. It started last September with Deion threatening to “pull an Eli” if certain teams showed interest in drafting his son, referencing Archie Manning’s intervention to stop the Chargers from drafting Eli Manning with the top pick. As much as we in the media like to throw around the idea that a prospect could “pull an Eli,” there are only two instances of it happening: Manning in 2004 and John Elway in 1983, when he threatened to play baseball if the then-Baltimore Colts drafted him. Both of those quarterbacks were viewed as rare, generational draft prospects, though. We can now safely say that the NFL didn’t view Shedeur in the nearly same light.
The Sanders family continued to misplay the draft process when Sheuder didn’t participate in practices at the Shrine Bowl in February and then skipped out on drills at the combine in March. Not working out at these events is a luxury that bona fide first-round quarterback prospects enjoy, but those fighting to get drafted at the bottom of the first round or on Day 2 have never been able to approach those tentpole events in the manner Sanders did. Ward, who locked in his status as the clear QB1 in this class early in the process, also didn’t throw or participate in drills at the combine—and he didn’t need to. But do you know who did? Jaxson Dart, Tyler Shough, Jalen Milroe, and Gabriel. Those prospects knew they had only a few opportunities to impress scouts and solidify their spots in the top half of the draft. Sanders assumed he could coast through the process and still land in the first half of the first round, despite many analysts putting him in the same tier as Dart and Shough and only slightly ahead of the third tier of passers.
Not hiring an agent also may have hurt Sanders. Agents work hard to put out those little PR fires that seemed to engulf the Shedeur narratives. They consult with teams to gauge the league’s actual perspective on their client, rather than relying on a player’s unrelenting self-belief and projections in internet mock drafts. An agent might have let Sanders and his family know that he needed to compete with the Darts and Shoughs of the world at the pre-draft events if he wanted to avoid the embarrassment he eventually suffered throughout the weekend. For as connected as Colorado’s Hall of Famer head coach probably is in the NFL, apparently no one with any of the league’s 32 teams was comfortable telling him the truth about how they really viewed his son.
A more realistic view of Shedeur’s draft status may have altered the family’s approach entirely over the last few months. Perhaps he would have been more inclined to show the more likable side of his personality, the part Callahan, Berry, and Shurmur endorsed. And in return, maybe it would have been easier for teams to view him as an attractive backup option worth taking on Day 2, rather than a developmental prospect who might also be a locker-room distraction. After all, half the job of being a backup quarterback is being a good hang and a selfless teammate. Even if you don’t check those boxes, it shouldn’t be hard to fake it in interviews.
There are plenty of anonymous quotes out there bashing Sanders’s personality, but the one that best explains his draft fall is based on an on-field critique. Via Pelissero:
“His college tape looked like Caleb Williams without the elite physical arm talent,” an NFC coordinator said. “I’m sorry: You can’t play that game at this level. So, you’ve got to be banking on him making a jump from a decision-making, in-the-pocket, on-time, under-pressure [perspective], where you don’t have evidence of that on tape. That, to me, is why people are going to be nervous about him. He’s not going to extend plays the way he did at Colorado. Nobody does, unless you’re Lamar (Jackson), Josh Allen, Kyler (Murray). Those guys are elite athletes. He’s not. So, it’s going to be a very different game he’s asked to play. I’m not saying he can’t do it. But that’s where the hesitation is going to come into play.”
At Colorado, Sanders played the position as if he had a margin for error that only a select few passers enjoy. In simpler terms, the guy had too much dip on his chip. He was a good quarterback who often tried to play like a great one, which led to a bloated sack total. To his credit, Sanders always seemed to bounce back from the big hits.
After approaching the draft process in a similar manner and getting metaphorically knocked on his ass by the league, he’ll have to show that his ability to get back up will translate to the pros.
Steven Ruiz has been an NFL analyst and QB ranker at The Ringer since 2021. He’s a D.C. native who roots for all the local teams except for the Commanders. As a child, he knew enough ball to not pick the team owned by Dan Snyder—but not enough to avoid choosing the Panthers.
