Cleveland Browns

University of Colorado head football coach and Pro Football Hall of Fame cornerback Deion Sanders took to social media Friday following his son, Shedeur Sanders, sliding to the fifth round of the 2025 NFL draft last weekend.

Sanders made a post on X about self-reflection, writing "stop the pity party," although it is unclear if the message was aimed at anyone or anything specific:

Entering the 2025 NFL draft, all signs point toward Shedeur Sanders being a first-round pick after his highly productive final season at Colorado under Coach Prime.

Shedeur completed 74.0 percent of his passes for 4,134 yards, 37 touchdowns and 10 interceptions last season en route to being named Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year.

However, Sanders fell out of the first round and didn't hear his name called until the Cleveland Browns made him the sixth quarterback taken with the No. 144 overall pick in the fifth round.

Coming out of the draft, rumors and speculation circulated suggesting that Deion may have played a role in Shedeur's draft slide.

Earlier this week, former NFL quarterback Chase Daniel said on the Scoop City podcast (beginning at the 8:50 mark) that comments Deion made last year may have rubbed NFL teams the wrong way.

Daniel said: "And then also we go back to the Deion thing. I think he's doing the right thing for his son, but he hinted it over a year ago, OK, that he might pull an Eli for his son because his son's a top five guy in the draft. Do you think that went over well in draft rooms? Like, we don't have to have hot takes. This is just pure, simply stated facts."

That statement was in reference to Deion's appearance on the Million Dollaz Worth of Game podcast (h/t ESPN.com) in March 2024 when he said, "It's going to be an Eli," when asked what would happen if a team Shedeur didn't want to play for tried to draft him.

In 2004, Eli Manning went public with his desire to play for a team other than the San Diego Chargers. The Chargers still took him first overall, but they traded him a short while later to the New York Giants for quarterback Philip Rivers and draft picks.

It was also reported by NFL draft expert Todd McShay (h/t Dan Benton of USA Today) that Sanders "didn't have a great interview" with the New York Giants and head coach Brian Daboll.

Sanders was reportedly unprepared, Daboll called him out on it, and Sanders didn't react well, which Daboll "didn't appreciate."

That was in line with a previous report from McShay, stating that some NFL teams felt Shedeur didn't take a "professional approach" to pre-draft interviews.

Whatever the reason for Sanders' shocking drop to the fifth-round of the draft, he still has a chance to prove himself worthy of being an NFL starter, as the Browns have perhaps the most unsettled quarterback situation in the league.

When Shedeur Sanders was still on the board in the fourth round of the 2025 NFL draft, the Cleveland Browns decided to aggressively pursue him.

According to ESPN's Daniel Oyefusi, Browns general manager Andrew Berry "worked hard" to find a trade that would bring Sanders to Cleveland as his fall continued early on Day 3.

The Browns' calls to other teams about moving up started late in the fourth round, according to Oyefusi. They eventually found a partner in the Seattle Seahawks for the 144th pick.

Cleveland moved up 22 spots by sending the Seahawks picks No. 166 and 192 to ensure the front office could select Sanders. It's probably not a coincidence that's the spot in the draft where the Browns made the trade.

NFL Network's Ian Rapoport noted the Philadelphia Eagles, who were picking at 145, had interest in Sanders when the Browns moved up.

It's unclear if the Eagles would have used that pick on Sanders if he had still been on the board. General manager Howie Roseman declined to answer a question about their level of interest during an appearance on Wednesday's episode of The Rich Eisen Show (h/t Chris Franklin of NJ.com).

"I wouldn’t do that with anyone," Roseman said when asked if Sanders was on their draft board. "I certainly don’t want to deal with one single player. That could open the door to many questions, Rich."

The Browns' selection of Sanders, once regarded as a potential first-round pick, was widely praised as a steal.

There were some questions about Cleveland's decision to spend multiple picks on quarterbacks, having already taken Dillon Gabriel in the third round. Berry addressed that subject during his post-draft press conference on Saturday:

"We talk oftentimes about quarterback being the most important position in the sport. It wasn’t necessarily the plan going into the weekend to select two quarterbacks, but as we talk about, we do believe in best player available, we do believe position value, and we didn’t necessarily expect him to be available in the fifth round. It got to a point where he was probably mispriced relative to the draft."

If Sanders develops into a quality starting quarterback in the NFL, no one will care that the Browns used a second pick on the position. Considering all of the issues over the years they've had finding a long-term answer at quarterback, using multiple draft picks to address the position is hardly the worst idea in the world.

Shedeur Sanders had an interesting approach to the NFL draft process, and that clearly contributed to his slide to the fifth round.

According to Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio, one general manager said the Colorado product treated his meetings with teams ahead of the draft as if he were being "recruited," rather than being "interviewed."

Sanders, who threw for 4,134 yards and 37 touchdowns with the Buffaloes last season, was widely projected to be a first-round pick heading into the draft. Even after the first round came and went, it seemed like it was only a matter of time before someone picked him up.

But he continued falling through the second, third and fourth rounds before finally getting selected by the Cleveland Browns in the fifth round.

In the days after the draft, several reports made it clear that Sanders' slide had less to do with his skill than it did with the way he went about the draft process.

NFL insider Josina Anderson reported in March that one quarterbacks coach from a team drafting inside the top seven said the 23-year-old came across as "brash" and "arrogant" during his interview. According to The Ringer's Todd McShay, teams felt he didn't have a "professional approach" in interviews.

Per CBS Sports' Jonathan Jones, Sanders "more or less sandbagged" and "did not give it his all" during interviews with teams he didn't want to play for, which "rubbed some teams the wrong way."

Sanders also reportedly didn't take the blame for interceptions when watching film with teams and failed to identify intentionally placed mistakes in an install.

There have been plenty of players in the past who had bad interviews or came into the draft with a little too much confidence but still were selected in the first round, but teams this year clearly felt Sanders' character issues outweighed what he could give them on the field.

Retired NFL quarterback Cam Newton called on Cleveland Browns draft pick Shedeur Sanders to "lead with work, not clout" as he embarks on his rookie season.

Newton suggested on his 4th & 1 show that Sanders "took on the persona of a DB, not a QB." There's a distinction between the two in the eyes of the 2015 MVP because a quarterback is the "CEO" for his franchise:

NFL teams sent a pretty clear message to Sanders by letting him fall to the fifth round of the NFL draft. They saw some flaws in his game, enough to think he's not a nailed-on starter in the league. They weren't enamored with how he approached the predraft process, either.

After getting picked by Cleveland, Sanders told reporters he's ready for "whatever role" the team envisions for him straight out of the gate. It's safe to assume his ceiling early on is to back up the Week 1 starter, whether that's Kenny Pickett or Joe Flacco.

Sanders has a lot of skeptics to overcome, both around the NFL and within his own organization. After all, the Browns took Dillon Gabriel two rounds ahead of him.

The Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award winner has to let his performance and effort level in practice do the talking from here on out.

Following his surprising slide to the fifth round of the 2025 NFL draft, new Cleveland Browns quarterback Shedeur Sanders discussed some major topics upon his arrival in Cleveland this week.

Sanders made a surprise visit to John Marshall High School in Cleveland on Wednesday, and he fielded questions from the students in attendance:

Per Jacob Camenker of USA Today, Sanders made his ultimate goal clear, saying: "I'm trying to bring Cleveland, of course, a Super Bowl."

Sanders also talked about the influence of his father, Deion Sanders, who was his head coach at the University of Colorado in addition to being a Pro Football Hall of Fame cornerback.

This week on the Scoop City podcast (beginning at the 8:50 mark), former NFL quarterback Chase Daniel suggested that comments Deion made last year contributed to Shedeur falling to the fifth round, saying:

"And then also we go back to the Deion thing. I think he's doing the right thing for his son, but he hinted it over a year ago, OK, that he might pull an Eli for his son because his son's a top-five guy in the draft. Do you think that went over well in draft rooms? Like, we don't have to have hot takes. This is just pure, simply stated facts."

Daniel was referencing Deion's appearance on the Million Dollaz Worth of Game podcast (h/t ESPN.com) in March 2024 when he said, "It's going to be an Eli," after being asked about a team Shedeur potentially didn't want to play for trying to draft him.

That was an allusion to the 2004 draft when quarterback Eli Manning made it clear he didn't want to play for the San Diego Chargers, which led to them trading him to the New York Giants after selecting him first overall.

Despite the talk of Deion adversely impacting his stock, Shedeur said Deion's presence has been a "positive," adding: "I'm thankful my dad took the opportunity to do what he was supposed to do. I don't never feel shame or anything like that. ... My dad's who he is, and I'm gonna be who I am regardless. I'm always gonna be his son."

In the end, Sanders landed with a team that may give him a legitimate chance to win the starting job as a rookie.

The Browns took Sanders with the 144th overall pick in the fifth round, adding him to a quarterback room that includes Kenny Pickett, Joe Flacco and Dillion Gabriel, who Cleveland selected with the 94th overall pick in the third round.

Since Deshaun Watson is in danger of missing much or all of the 2025 season due to a torn Achilles, there figures to be a four-way battle for the starting job in training camp between Sanders, Pickett, Flacco and Gabriel.

Now that the initial shock of Sanders falling to Day 3 despite having first-round hype has worn off, he will have the opportunity to prove the rest of the league wrong for passing on him.

It's not every day that a fifth-round draft pick generates plenty of hype for a rookie card, but Shedeur Sanders is far from a typical fifth-round draft pick.

The Cleveland Browns' newest quarterback revealed his first Panini Instant rookie card for his NFL career on Thursday:

Notably, the card has "Pick #144" on the front, which is where Sanders fell to as the draft progressed.

He was one of the biggest names of the draft going into the event, and it became the biggest story of the entire event when he wasn't selected in the first round. That story only grew as teams continued to pass on him in the second, third and fourth rounds.

The Browns eventually stopped the slide with a fifth-round pick, which isn't what the Colorado product who was once seen as a surefire first-rounder envisioned as he turned his attention toward his NFL career.

Cleveland also selected Oregon's Dillon Gabriel in the third round, which made the pick all the more noteworthy.

While Sanders surely didn't want to fall so far in the draft, going to the Browns does give him an opportunity to compete for a starting role right away.

The 2024 Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year likely won't have to worry about Deshaun Watson, given the veteran's Achilles injury. That means competing against an unproven Kenny Pickett, a 40-year-old Joe Flacco and a fellow middle-round draft pick in Gabriel.

Winning the starting job would make that first rookie card all the more valuable.

The Cleveland Browns quarterback discourse may just be getting started.

While the AFC North team turned heads during the 2025 NFL draft by selecting Oregon's Dillon Gabriel in the third round and Colorado's Shedeur Sanders in the fifth round, they may once again be in the market for a signal-caller during the 2026 draft.

At least NFL draft insider Todd McShay believes that could be the case.

McShay released his first 2026 mock draft Thursday, and he projected Cleveland to select Clemson's Cade Klubnik with the No. 5 overall pick. 

The full mock is available at the 56-minute mark, and he forecasted LSU quarterback Garrett Nussmeier as the No. 1 pick to the New York Jets, Ohio State safety Caleb Downs as the No. 2 pick to the New Orleans Saints, Clemson defensive lineman Peter Woods as the No. 3 pick to the New York Giants and South Carolina quarterback LaNorris Sellers as the No. 4 pick to the Los Angeles Rams.

The Browns picking at No. 5 overall means McShay doesn't believe they will have a good 2025 season, which would be anything but surprising. After all, they are coming off a 3-14 campaign and have questions under center with Deshaun Watson underperforming since he arrived and suffering yet another Achilles injury.

There are nothing but question marks elsewhere on the depth chart as well.

Joe Flacco is 40 years old, Kenny Pickett is anything but a star and just had his fifth-year contract option declined, and Gabriel and Sanders are both unknown rookies who were mid-round picks despite the amount of noise surrounding the Colorado quarterback.

Klubnik will be under the spotlight as a draft candidate during the upcoming college football season after he led the Tigers to the College Football Playoff in 2024 by completing 63.4 percent of his passes for 3,639 yards, 36 touchdowns and six interceptions.

Another excellent season could put him in position to be an early pick where teams like the Browns may be waiting.

There was clearly a disconnect between how Shedeur Sanders was viewed as a prospect leading up to the 2025 NFL draft and where he ended up going in the fifth round, and one NFL talent evaluator believes the media was working from behind.

"Maybe the [New York] Giants came to the conclusion like the rest of us that Sanders is a second-round pick," the evaluator told Mike Sando of The Athletic.

"I bristle at everyone saying they are smearing his name. Everyone has caught up to the evaluation that he is not a first-round prospect. The media guys are lagging behind the evaluations, so there has to be a reason."

Sanders was seen as a surefire first-rounder for months leading up to the draft and even a candidate to be the No. 1 overall pick during the college football season until Cam Ward started to separate himself.

Still, there were at least some signs the Colorado product wouldn't be as early of a pick as once thought as the draft approached. One NFL coach told Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated that Sanders would have been a sixth-round pick if he weren't the son of Hall of Famer Deion Sanders.

"He doesn't play with good feet, he's late on stuff, he has an average arm," the coach said. "His accuracy is O.K., but he has no timing, no anticipation. He flashes some throws, but he's an average player, not a great athlete. Even if you watch his pro day, there's no timing or rhythm. He takes extra hitches."

Sanders' slide was the biggest storyline in the draft, especially after the Giants selected Jaxson Dart instead of him in the first round.

The Colorado product's fall to the fifth round also led to plenty of discourse about what happened and what went wrong. Along those lines, CBS Sports' Jonathan Jones (2:38 mark) reported that the signal-caller "more or less sandbagged" interviews with teams he didn't want to go to, which "rubbed some teams the wrong way."

Even the Cleveland Browns being the team to take him was somewhat of a surprise, as they had just selected Oregon's Dillon Gabriel in the third round and have a crowded quarterback room with an injured Deshaun Watson, Joe Flacco and Kenny Pickett in addition to the rookies.

Ultimately, Sanders will have the opportunity to prove that the early prognostications of him being a first-round pick were the correct ones, but it seems like there is at least some belief within the league that the media overrated him as a prospect.

Even though the Cleveland Browns’ selection of Shedeur Sanders in the fifth round of the 2025 NFL draft was widely praised as a great value pick, the organization’s entire process to getting there is the subject of scrutiny from people within the league. 

Speaking to The Athletic’s Mike Sando, the consensus opinion from NFL executives was that the Browns don’t “necessarily have a vision for the collective” based on taking Sanders after they used a third-round pick on Dillon Gabriel. 

One executive told Sando went so far as to say it was “too hard for a team like the Browns” to pass up on Sanders in a way that wasn’t complimentary toward them:

“You like some of the pieces, but there is the glue that has never been there. Most teams had Sanders rated as a second-round pick, but when you are building a team, you have to include the intangibles and the other stuff and decide whether you want it or not. For most teams at that stage, it was not worth it. So he falls a couple rounds, and it’s too hard for a team like the Browns to pass on him.”

In isolation, the Browns’ trading up for the 144th pick to take Sanders was a good bit of business. He was being projected as a first-round pick hours before the draft started on April 24. 

When you look at it in the context of Cleveland spending the 94th pick on another quarterback in Gabriel, then you start to wonder if one hand knows what the other is doing. 

NFL insider James Palmer said after the draft that people around the league are saying Sanders’ selection was driven by Browns owner Jimmy Haslam, rather than a collective decision that included general manager Andrew Berry and head coach Kevin Stefanski (starts at 4:12 mark).

When you consider all of the roster needs the Browns have, investing two mid-round picks on the quarterback spot when they could have filled another spot seems confusing. 

It’s not common for teams to double-dip at quarterback in the draft, though it has happened three times in the last four years. The Browns are the 11th team to do so since the seven-round format was adopted in 1994, but the gap between the Gabriel and Sanders selections is the smallest on record.

The Browns taking Gabriel also offers insight into how their draft board was lined up. If they had Sanders ranked ahead of Gabriel, they would have taken him in the third round.

There's nothing inherently wrong with giving yourself as many options at quarterback as possible, especially given what the Browns' situation looked like going into the draft when they had Joe Flacco and Kenny Pickett penciled in as the top two players on the depth chart.

Deshaun Watson remains under contract, but his status for 2025 is unclear after reinjuring his Achilles in January.

Now, Stefanski and the coaching staff will enter OTAS and training camp needing to figure out where all of these quarterbacks will land on the depth chart. It's a difficult task to undertake for an organization that has been starved for any semblance of stability at that position for years so the infamous jersey can finally be retired.

The perception of Cleveland Browns rookie quarterback Shedeur Sanders' personality is still a hot topic after he shockingly slid to the fifth round of the 2025 NFL draft.

The Athletic's Mike Sando spoke to an NFL coach who compared Sanders' demeanor to former No. 1 overall picks Kyler Murray and Baker Mayfield, suggesting that the seismic drop in the draft could be enough to humble him the same way they were humbled when they got to the league.

"Kyler took years to get where he’s at today; Baker took time to get there," the coach said. "If Shedeur were the second pick, does he ever get there? In the fifth round, maybe he will be humbled and listen. Because he works and is a good student and all that. He just comes off as entitled and as having a higher opinion of himself than he should."

Sanders was projected to go as high as the No. 2 pick earlier in the offseason, but his stock took a major hit during the pre-draft process when reports surfaced about his less-than-stellar showings in team interviews. Still, no one predicted that he would fall all the way to the fifth round or be the sixth quarterback off the board when the Browns selected him.

For his part, Sanders has maintained his positive attitude. He even surprised high school students in Cleveland this week and delivered an inspirational message.

"I’m trying to bring Cleveland a Super Bowl!" Sanders told the students, per Mary Kay Cabot of Cleveland.com. "Not just on the field, but off the field as well. I want to bring more hope and positivity to the city, and connecting with young people is one of the best ways to do that."