Someone is going to turn out to be embarrassingly wrong. Like, the kind of wrong studio executives were when they said Al Pacino was a lousy choice to play Michael Corleone. He was brilliant in “The Godfather”, one of the greatest movies ever made. Or the kind of wrong studio executives were when they greenlit “The Marvels” a couple years back. They lost more than a quarter-million dollars on that flop.
Someone blew it. It’s either the draft analysts who insisted in advance Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders was the best quarterback in the NFL Draft, or it’s the eight or more QB-hungry teams that chose not to choose him.
In more than four decades of national draft coverage, it’s likely there never has been a greater variance between external analysis of a particular player and NFL teams’ assessment of his value when it was time to invite him into the league.
ESPN’s legendary Mel Kiper, who basically invented the art of covering the draft, ranked Sanders as the No. 5 overall prospect and top QB. Charlie Campbell of WalterFootball.com, the most accurate mock draft projector in three of the past seven years, also had him as the No. 1 quarterback. The NFL Network’s Daniel Jeremiah placed him at 20th overall and No. 2 at his position.
And after four more hours of the draft passed Friday, with a total of 102 players selected during the first two days, with five quarterbacks taken over the first three rounds, Sanders still was waiting for someone to call his name.
Those who cover the sport made it a big deal when Aaron Rodgers fell to 24th in the 2005 draft. That’s 78 picks sooner than Sanders. At least. Because no one knows when on Saturday – as the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh rounds proceed – he’ll be chosen.
It was a blow to Sanders’ transition to pro football when the Giants traded into the 25th position late Thursday and selected Jaxson Dart of Ole Miss instead. It was daunting when the Browns spent two early second-round picks Friday on a linebacker and running back. When the great Lynn Swann stepped to the microphone, flashed four Super Bowl rings and announced the Steelers’ pick at No. 83 overall as Iowa running back Kaleb Johnson, that had to be hard to take.
But then the Seahawks chose Alabama’s jocky Jalen Milroe at No. 92 overall. And the Browns, after four times opting not to address their bereft quarterback depth chart, chose Oregon’s Dillon Gabriel at 94.
That felt personal.
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By the time the Raiders were exercising consecutive picks just before the draft got to triple digits and using both on offensive linemen, Sanders’ draft experience had crossed into unexplored levels of misery.
One comfortably could ascribe Sanders’ lack of allure at the first-round level to his middling arm and dynamism. He was the most accurate passer in major college football in 2024, but he’s not exceptional at running or eluding defenders, and he doesn’t own the sort of arm defenders and opposing coaches fear.
It was impossible to continue insisting these were the only issues after a team with a desperate need for a quarterback opted to address that by drafting Gabriel, who stands just 5-11 and will turn 25 late in the season.
Maybe it’s not a good look to employ just a single word in one’s Twitter bio, especially if that word is “legendary”. Maybe steamrolling past Colorado legends Eric Bienemy, Michael Westbrook and Kordell Stewart to retire Shedeur’s CU jersey was diagnosed as premature aggrandizement. Maybe having a special venue developed to conduct one’s draft party seemed excessive.
We don’t know why Sanders still is available at this stage of the 2025 draft, and when he’s finally chosen, the team in question is going to present the selection as definitive evidence of the team’s genius or good fortune. A top-20 player in the fourth round! How brilliant/lucky are we?
The rest of Sanders’ football career, however long that might last, will be measured against this weekend. Rodgers still hears about his draft, and he’s won a Super Bowl and been selected for 10 Pro Bowls.
Shedeur no long will enter the league with the pressure of a presumed starter. The team that chooses him will plan for him to be a backup – immediately and for more than a little while. His father was his high school offensive coordinator and his college coach all four years. This will be an experience unlike Sanders has encountered. How will he handle it?
It won’t cost an NFL team much at all to learn the answer.
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