NFL Talent Evaluators Have Major Concerns with Shedeur Sanders
Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated is hearing that NFL talent evaluators have major concerns with Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders, and it has nothing to do with his brash personality.
“I’m having a really hard time finding coaches or scouts who believe Sanders is a first-round talent,” Breer wrote. “This, by the way, is separate from any issue anyone has with his personality. Those questions exist, but lots of teams have made exceptions in that department in the past to take on guys with special talents. The problem seems to be that too many folks don’t think Sanders has those types of gifts.
“What I keep hearing—and this has nothing to do with anyone having some personal issue with Sanders, or looking for him to fall in the draft so they can draft him—is that he isn’t a great athlete on tape, doesn’t have exceptional arm talent, and too often does things that simply won’t translate to the NFL game.”
Breer thinks there’s a good chance that Sanders will fall out of the top-10, which would put him in prime position to land with the Steelers at No. 21.
“Anyway, I don’t think Sanders is going in the top three. And at this point, it feels like it’d be surprising if the Las Vegas Raiders, New York Jets or Saints took him in the top 10,” Breer wrote.
Sanders gave a blunt message to NFL teams who are considering passing on him in the 2025 NFL Draft. He’ll make note of it if he ends up falling to the Pittsburgh Steelers at No. 21 overall.
“That’s on the people,” Sanders said to Kay Adams on Up & Adams. “That’s on the other franchises that could make that mistake of letting me go there.”
Sanders said he is always going to be himself even though he knows that might rub some teams the wrong way.
“When I go visit these coaches and when I go to all these different franchises, I ask them truly what I think and how I feel,” Sanders said on the NFL Network’s The Insiders. “Some get offended, some like it, some don’t. Make some people uncomfortable, some people invite that. They know what type of person and what type of player they’re gonna get out of me, so I just have to make sure, you know, what type of culture or what type of dynamic I’m going to have with them also.”
The Steelers welcomed Sanders to the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex last Thursday, ahead of the 2025 NFL Draft in two weeks.
“I enjoyed my time here in Pittsburgh. I think I connected well with all the coaches, and it was real fun,” he said on Up & Adams.
When asked for a grade on the visit, he gave it a 10.
“I understand the mindset and why they win a lot,” he said.
He attributed that to the franchise’s culture and said that Mike Tomlin has a lot to do with it.
“What he preaches from his staff down is similar to my dad,” he said.
Shedeur’s father Deion was his head coach throughout college at Jackson State and Colorado. He’s also in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and considered one of the best cornerbacks in the history of the NFL.
Coach Prime also was known to play with a lot of swagger. And Shedeur Sanders certainly has that same kind of self-confidence.
“Now, it’s not like Sanders is devoid of ability. Even his critics will tell you that he’s accurate, smart and tough, and credit him for winning consistently at programs where it’s hard to do that. There’s production there that doesn’t happen if a kid can’t play,” Breer wrote.
“But one interesting point that was raised to me in comparing Sanders to Ole Miss’s Jaxson Dart a couple months ago was interesting. The coach I was talking to said, simply, that when you watch those two under duress on tape, you see Dart moving forward, and Sanders moving backward. That essentially means that where Dart would climb the pocket, Sanders would bail out the back of it, and run away from defenders to create time to throw.
“It’s a little thing, but to this coach, it was an example of how Dart’s game may translate to the NFL better—and how in a league with freakish pass rushers all over the place, the quarterback who manipulates the space around him has a much better chance than the one trying to create space on his own.”