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When Shedeur Sanders dropped all the way down to pick 144 in the 2025 NFL Draft to the Cleveland Browns, it genuinely took the league and its fans by storm.
How, folks wondered, could a player who was considered a potential top 2 pick mere weeks earlier fall all the way to the fifth round after a handful of other quarterbacks already came off the board, including Dillon Gabriel, to the very same team?
Well, The Athletic's Bruce Feldman weighed in on the situation, noting that, after the open starting jobs like the Tennessee Titans and the New Orleans Saints were filled, teams weren't as eager to bring in a backup quarterback who seemingly had a starter's mentality.
“Being a developmental quarterback and going to a spot with an established starter, like the LA Rams or Seattle Seahawks, would’ve been an interesting dynamic. So much of being an NFL backup quarterback is how comfortable the starter is with the other two QBs in the room,” Feldman wrote.
“Shedeur Sanders has always been the starting QB and the star wherever he’s been, at Jackson State and then Colorado. I suspect his fit played a role in why so many teams opted not to pick him earlier. The Cleveland Browns took another QB, Oregon’s Dillon Gabriel, two rounds earlier, and that is against whom Sanders has to compete, along with 40-year-old Joe Flacco and Kenny Pickett.”
Feldman wasn't alone in his assertion, as a wide receivers coach he talked to shared a similar review of bringing in Sanders as a developmental project, noting that a player needs to have a certain mentality to fit into that sort of role in a quarterback's room.
“He’s got a skill set, but no dominant trait. He’s a backup at this point, and those guys have to be wired for humble support of the starter,” an NFL WR coach told Feldman. “The intel I got was shocking: ‘This guy has no awareness about how he’s coming across,’ or the type of leverage he has or doesn’t have.”
Did Sanders rub some teams the wrong way? Oh yeah, it's clear his pre-draft antics may have dissuaded a few legitimately interested parties from taking him, and that strategy blew up in his face based on how the board shook out. And yet, in the end, Sanders did end up going to a team where he could start, and thus, fans will never get to see how he handled a situation where he was forced to be a true backup, like if he landed with the Philadelphia Eagles, who expressed some interest. Weird how life works out.
