At the end of the NFL Draft’s third round, with Shedeur Sanders still on the board, ESPN’s analysts tried to make sense of one of the most unprecedented draft slides in the league’s history.
“It’s gotta be about more than football,” Booger McFarland said.
There has been social media speculation about father Deion Sanders’ role in all this. ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that he heard that Shedeur didn’t interview great.
Could that really knock a QB from the first round to the fourth?
“It becomes about personal feelings about an individual, whether you like the individual, whether you like the way they talk to you,” ESPN’s Louis Riddick said.
There’s no doubting one thing: There has been almost nothing else like this, ever.
“It is inarguably one of the most surprising and shocking stories that I can recall in all my years following the draft,” ESPN’s Mike Greenberg said.
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Sanders spent much of the 2024 college season in contention for the No. 1 overall pick with Cam Ward.
Even as Ward started to pull away, many wondered whether the Browns at No. 2 or Giants at No. 3 would take Sanders.
His fall has been so drastic that both those teams got quarterbacks (Jaxson Dart to NYG in first round, Dillon Gabriel to CLE in third round) and neither was Sanders.
This isn’t the case of a guy like Jake Locker or Sam Howell, both of whom had No. 1 pick buzz before their last college season but then underwhelmed and fell down the board.
Sanders played incredibly well despite a patchwork offensive line and non-existent running game.
This is a guy who by many measures is an extremely impressive quarterback.
Somehow, no one wants him.
Maybe someday it’ll come out why that is.
But for now, everyone is left scratching their heads.
Shedeur Sanders deserved to get drafted a long time ago, but those with each of the NFL’s 32 teams apparently do not agree.
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