In the wake of Shedeur Sanders's shocking fall down the board at the 2025 NFL draft, many have unanswered questions as to how the former Colorado Buffaloes quarterback suffered such a steep slide.
Sanders was ultimately picked by the Cleveland Browns in the fifth round on Day 3, stopping his agonizing tumble to end up as the QB6 behind Cam Ward, Jaxson Dart, Tyler Shough, Jalen Milroe and Dillon Gabriel. Compared to his peers, Sanders came out of the draft very much scathed as a once-projected top-five pick whose ego arguably took a bit of a bruising.
A report from CBS Sports' Jonathan Jones over the weekend has shed new light on Sanders's draft fall. In his report, Jones stated that the 23-year-old may have deliberately done poorly in his pre-draft interviews at the combine to avoid getting picked by certain NFL teams.
"At some of those [combine] meetings with certain teams that maybe Shedeur Sanders didn't really want to go to, didn't see himself going to for any number of reasons, maybe they had a starting quarterback installed there—I was told that he more or less sandbagged in those interviews. I don't know if he didn't take them seriously, what it was, but he did not give it his all in some of those interviews. Rubbed some teams the wrong way," Jones said on Saturday.
Expanded on this last night for @CBSSports pic.twitter.com/VFD4xIfLAw https://t.co/w2vcU7d0qI
— Jonathan Jones (@jjones9) April 26, 2025
Jones's report suggests that Sanders, who was repeatedly passed on by the Giants, Raiders and Steelers, miscalculated his own stock and perhaps had the wrong mindset going into draft. The report draws parallels to the Sanders controversy a year ago when Sanders's dad Deion publicly stated that he didn't want his son playing for certain teams.
"I know where I want them to go," Deion said, referring to Shedeur and Shilo on the Million Dollaz Worth of Game podcast in March 2024. "There's certain cities where it ain't going to happen... It's going to be an Eli (Manning). We ain't doing that."
Deion has since cleared the air and said he would be happy wherever Sanders ends up in the NFL, but his previous comments are still hard to ignore.
Though Sanders's confidence may have gotten the better of him during the pre-draft process, the newly minted Browns quarterback still has a chance to get his NFL career off on the right foot ahead of the start of the new season.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Report: Shedeur Sanders Purposely Tanked Pre-Draft Interviews With Teams He Didn’t Like.
