SHEDEUR SANDERS, ICARUS DESCENDING:
Oh, the promotion. The hype. Shedeur Sanders walked into the NFL Draft a legend in his own mind — literally. He built the hype, using daddy’s money to set up a bespoke “draft room,” decked out in anticipatory bling-filled celebration of his inevitable first-round pick. (The shelf of teams hats, from which he was going to pick one for the cameras, was a nice touch.) “LEGENDARY” and “PERFECT TIMING” went the slogans written on the wall behind the couch where he was to sit. He appeared conspicuously in public to be photographed wearing an enormous silver chain necklace emblazoned “$$2,” his brand nickname. (The dollar signs look like the letter “s,” get it?)
And then he went undrafted in the first round. And then he went undrafted in the second round. And then he went undrafted in the third round — by which point the first night’s events had concluded and the world was agog. The next day Sanders again went undrafted in the fourth round, which is when social media began pulling out its most brutal jokes.
Finally, the drama reached its gloriously disgraceful denouement in the fifth round: Shedeur Sanders was drafted as the 144th pick by the Cleveland Browns. For those unfamiliar with the reputation of the Browns franchise, this is as if God decided Dante hadn’t added enough circles of hell to the Inferno; Cleveland is a notorious graveyard for football talent, and particularly for quarterbacks, who tend to resemble torn, leaky sacks of flour after a year behind the Browns O-line. (The list of “Famous Cleveland Quarterbacks” makes for even shorter airplane reading than the “Famous Jewish Sports Legends” leaflet.)
Deion Sanders himself once opined, back in 2018, that anyone selected in the draft by the Browns ought to refuse to play. So let’s see what his son does here! Needless to say, the world has sent both Shedeur Sanders and his father a message: Shedeur’s talent — as groomed and shielded and questionably represented by his father — is nowhere near good enough to sustain either his or his father’s ego. Deion Sanders himself was truly a special talent in the game (I had many explain this to me over the weekend), and the only thing that truly ever held him back was an equivalent level of self-regard. Shedeur — as his father’s son — shares an apparently similar level of self-regard. (He refused to attend the NFL combine and apparently flunked every interview with various franchise officials.) He does not share his father’s talent level. NFL teams will tolerate Deion levels of self-promotion and hype only from those with Deion-level talent — and not a second longer once they begin to slip. Shedeur never had a chance.
Related: Shedeur Sanders Finally Gets Drafted, and Then His Dad’s Old Tweets Surfaced.
“Look, I’m not here to endlessly dunk on the guy, but there’s a lesson here. NFL teams are professional organizations. They don’t care what ESPN says or how much Stephen A. Smith rants and raves. Shedeur Sanders thought he was bigger than the process, and he paid the price. Perhaps this will humble him and help him have a good career. We’ll see.” Shedeur Sanders infamously said, “Don’t get me if you ain’t trying to change the franchise or the coach.” Well, here’s your chance to both prove dad wrong and singlehandedly jumpstart the most moribund franchise in the NFL.