Shedeur Sanders' slide shows there's still a gap between NFL Draft's spectacle and reality

Yahoo

27-04-2025

Every spring, there are two NFL Drafts. There's the capital-D Draft, the traveling-roadshow spectacle that's a whirlwind of mock-draft specialists and jersey-clad fanatics alike. And then there's the lowercase-d draft, the staffing convention where 32 organizations are looking to make half a dozen strategic entry-level hires.
Early on, the Draft and the draft run on side-by-side, if not entirely parallel, tracks. Mock drafters and real drafters alike tend to agree that players like, say, Cam Ward, Travis Hunter and Abdul Carter don't need to get too comfortable in the green room before they get their call to the stage.
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But when draft 'insiders' and actual drafters diverge, well, that's when it gets interesting … and, in some notable cases, embarrassing.
Shedeur Sanders was a favorite of the Draft crowd, and it's not hard to see why — he plays the league's marquee position, he possesses notable if not necessarily elite skills, and he's the son of one-man content generation factory Deion Sanders. In the world of high-volume, low-stakes, zero-evidence debate that is the Draft Industrial Complex, Sanders might have been the perfect product: a Rorschach quarterback, one who could in theory be anything you wanted him to be.
Turns out, though, that the lower-case-d draft crowd, the ones actually making the phone calls to draftees — the real ones, at least — didn't want Sanders to be anything for them. Teams passed on Sanders four, five, even six times, selecting 143 players — including five quarterbacks — before Cleveland took the plunge.
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Plenty in the Draft world overvalued Sanders as a high first-round talent. (For the record: Yahoo Sports didn't have him going in the first round in our final mock.) That's fine; draft misses happen all the time. First-rounders don't pan out, and undrafted free agents blossom into stars and starters. Draft analysis is like astrology or weather forecasting — nobody expects you to be perfect, but at least be humble about your misses.
And that brings us around to the avatar of the 'Draft' world, ESPN's Mel Kiper Jr. Plenty of amateur and professional draft analysts whiffed on Sanders, but Kiper deserves special scrutiny for his embarrassing three-day-long fit of spluttering indignation on Sanders' behalf.
'The NFL has been clueless for 50 years when it comes to evaluating quarterbacks," Kiper declared on Saturday, after Sanders was finally picked. "Clueless. They have no idea what they're doing in terms of evaluating quarterbacks. That's proof. There's proof of that. They can say, 'We know exactly what we're talking about with quarterbacks.' They don't.' He trotted out the classic 'overlooked QB' rationale — did you know Tom Brady was a sixth-round pick? — without noting that in most cases, overlooked quarterbacks are overlooked for a very good reason.
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Users on X, of course, happily pulled receipts on the range of Kiper's quarterback knowledge.
Pretty much every journalist has an inflated sense of their own importance — it's a byproduct of having thousands or millions read or hear your thoughts — but Kiper took that to new, embarrassing lows over this draft weekend. He was the loudest and most aggrieved voice, but he wasn't alone.
There are lessons in the Sanders story in terms of talent evaluation, but there are also lessons in terms of talent promotion and advocacy, as well. It's worth noting that Sanders' loudest advocates, from ESPN to the White House, didn't exactly help his cause. What team is going to want to deal with constant bloviating, from ESPN and from the Colorado podium, about why Sanders ought to be starting the moment Cleveland's QB1 goes three-and-out? (Aside: We definitely do need a 'Hard Knocks' exclusively focused on the Browns quarterback room of Sanders, Joe Flacco, Kenny Pickett, Deshaun Watson and Dillon Gabriel.)
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The Sanders was story is primo capital-D Draft content, but the NFL made it clear – over and over – that its lower-case-d draft priorities weren't aligned with the spectacle aspect of the NFL. And although the spectacle-and-content crowd may not care for it, the needs of the actual draft trumps the storylines of 'The Draft,' every single time.
In the end, it's pretty simple: if 31 in-the-room analysts thought Sanders — the whole package that encompasses Sanders — was a fit for them, they would have selected him. The weather forecasting analogy might just be the best one here; you can tout your draft expertise and your past record, but if the clouds dumped rain when you predicted sunshine, well … the skies speak louder than forecasts. And you don't want to be the guy yelling at clouds.