NFL coaches, executives paint awful Shedeur Sanders picture during pre-draft interviews
With the NFL Draft one day away, anonymous NFL coaches and executives painted an awful picture of Shedeur Sanders during his pre-draft interviews. Sanders’ draft range goes from the top five to the backend of the first round.
At this point, who knows? What we do know, at least from anonymous evaluations via NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero, the former Colorado QB was not painted in a fine light.
Of course, these are based on his pre-draft interviews and not necessarily about everything on the field, where he was highly successful as a passer. But it’s another layer to the, apparently, complicated evaluation of Sanders.
“He’s all ball. But the program’s just different,” one AFC GM said, via Pelissero. “Do you blame him? It’s his dad. It’s going to be different than any other circumstances because of his dad and who his dad is. But you’d like to think [things will be different] once he gets outside of that. I don’t think it’ll be a problem. The guy wants to be really good. Sometimes you don’t overthink it. It’s complicated just because of the circumstance. He hasn’t helped himself in some of the interviews.”
“One longtime NFL assistant coach said his time with Sanders was ‘the worst formal interview I’ve ever been in in my life. He’s so entitled. He takes unnecessary sacks. He never plays on time. He has horrible body language. He blames teammates. … But the biggest thing is, he’s not that good.’” Pelissero wrote. “Said one longtime AFC executive: ‘It didn’t go great in our interview. He wants to dictate what he’s going to do and what’s best for him. He makes you feel small.’
“Even some of Sanders’ fans expressed disappointment he didn’t take a bigger step forward as a senior. ‘I liked him the year before,’ an NFC GM said. ‘They did change coordinators. It just felt different. It felt less athletic, less arm talent — everything felt less. If you’re talking about this year’s tape versus (Jaxson) Dart and Shedeur, I don’t think it was particularly close.’”
On the flip side, BuffZone’s Brian Howell painted an entirely different picture of Sanders. It was a much more positive perspective.
“Having covered Shedeur Sanders for 2 years, I find the hits on his character mind-boggling,” Howell wrote on Twitter. “The Shedeur I got to know is a leader, well-liked by his teammates, tough as nails, engaging with the media (after wins & losses), supremely confident but shows humility at times, not afraid to take on a challenge, one that will work on his game more than anyone on the team. I don’t know how good he’s going to be in the NFL, but I’d be surprised if he’s not a success, and if he slips in the draft, some team is going to get a steal.”
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