Many football fans will be shocked if University of Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders isn’t among the first names called in Thursday night’s NFL draft. Sanders, a four-year starter — he played his first two seasons at Jackson State University — is a top prospect in a draft class that NFL scouts generally view as short on franchise quarterback talent. There are at least five quarterback-starved teams picking in the top 10, and so, their thinking goes, it should be an early night for Sanders.
Doubts abound. Various NFL coaches and league executives — they're always anonymous — have derided Sanders since the NFL combine.
Yet doubts abound. Various NFL coaches and league executives — they're always anonymous — have derided Sanders since the NFL combine, foreshadowing a possible slide to later in the first round, if not after. Those doubts aren’t completely meritless. The defenses in Jackson State’s Southwestern Athletic Conference weren’t teeming with NFL-level talent. Colorado rejoined the Big 12 in 2024, but the team played only one ranked opponent all year. Sanders also declined to throw at the NFL combine, which no doubt bothered some coaches and scouts. However, he did throw later at Colorado’s pro day.
While there are valid on-field reasons to debate whether a team should stake its future on Shedeur Sanders’ arm, today’s a good day for transparency about what inspires the majority of the debate: worries about how big a role his famous father, Deion (aka “Prime Time,” aka “Coach Prime”) Sanders, will seek to have in his son’s professional football career.
Shedeur Sanders is a classic nepo baby, despite the “he got it out of the mud” narrative that his fans and his father’s fans like to spread. To say that Sanders has benefited from nepotism isn’t to insult the player or to stand with his critics whose animus toward him is less about his abilities and more about his father. Instead it’s an attempt to view the player with clarity and be honest about the reasons so much more time and attention, at least in sports media, are being devoted to him than on any other player in this year’s draft.
It’s true that Sanders is being considered for the NFL draft because of his talent and hard work. He compiled a 70.1% completion percentage with 134 passing touchdowns and only 27 interceptions in college. He’s what most football coaches want: an efficient passer who minimizes turnovers; in short, he earned his way to the NFL draft with his play.
But it’s also true that he owes much of his success to being the son of a Pro Football Hall of Famer who is one of the most braggadocious athletes to ever stride the planet. Deion Sanders, who’d never coached on the collegiate level, nonetheless had the clout to cut deals that made him his son’s head football coach at two NCAA Division I programs and the personality to do so unapologetically.
Deion Sanders, who’d never coached on the collegiate level, cut deals that made him his son’s head football coach at two NCAA Division I programs.
I’ve talked to fans who point out that University of Texas quarterback Arch Manning is projected as a top pick in next year’s draft, no doubt owed in part to the fact that his uncles, Peyton and Eli Manning, won four Super Bowls between them as quarterbacks and his grandfather, Archie Manning, played quarterback for the New Orleans Saints. But the comparison between the youngest Manning and the young Sanders ends at famous relatives. Whatever the elder Mannings have done to manage Arch’s climb has been done behind the scenes. To watch Shedeur’s college career was to also watch his dad’s second act as a coach and social media personality and to hear him call you a hater if you didn’t like what you saw.
He’s not wrong that many fans, and no doubt some coaches and league officials, don’t like the Sanders’ default in-your-face posture. If flashing an expensive watch at the opposing sideline in game, then posting a YouTube video about why you did it is an example of Shedeur mimicking his father’s cockiness, it’s also a, uh, prime example of a brand of puffery that some segments of America have always been uncomfortable with in accomplished Black men. Shedeur himself has even called that out, telling NBC Sports that he’s been mentored by former Black quarterbacks who understand what he’s been through.
If Sanders falls in the draft, it could be partly because some teams fear the idea of drafting him and then having to contend with public criticism from his dad if they make decisions “Coach Prime” doesn’t like. It’d be an awful reason for a talented player to have his draft stock tumble, but bad things have happened in the NFL draft for even less valid reasons. For his own part, Shedeur Sanders seems unmoved by it all. Asked in a recent interview about the prospect of not being taken first overall, he shrugged.
“Why would I be mad?” he asked. “You gotta understand, I think about it like this: These are good problems to have. You could be in a way worse situation.”
If Shedeur Sanders falls in the draft, it could be because teams fear drafting him and then having to contend with public criticism from his dad.
That’s a good outlook to have for somebody under the spotlight he’s under. However much Sanders owes his success to having a powerful parent, what he’s really owed from the outset is to be treated like any other prospect in this year’s draft. The best, yet most improbable, outcome is that he’s drafted high, then totally insulated from his father’s shadow and whatever projection coaches and fans might direct from elder onto junior. What Sanders deserves is the opportunity to succeed or fail on his own.
But nothing we’ve seen so far — from Shedeur Sanders, Deion Sanders, NFL teams or fans — suggests that is likely to happen.