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No story dominated the 2025 NFL Draft like the slide that came to a merciful end when the Browns selected Shedeur Sanders. There was plenty of evidence that suggested teams were skeptical he has what it takes to compete at the next level, and insider Albert Breer has revealed a couple of specific issues that arose during some of the interviews he conducted in the lead-up to the event.
There’s never been more attention paid to a player who was picked in the fifth round of the NFL Draft than the amount dedicated to Shedeur Sanders, who was widely positioned as one of the top quarterback prospects in a class led by Cam Ward after he wrapped up his final season at Colorado.
It initially seemed like there was a pretty good chance Sanders would be selected at some point in the first round, but that possibility was cast into doubt thanks to a number of reports that surfaced as the draft got closer that asserted NFL teams were souring on the QB after taking a closer look at his skills and being turned off by the manner with which he conducted himself during interviews.
Sanders’ name was still on the board when the first round wrapped up in Green Bay on Thursday and remained there after the next two were completed ahead of the start of the weekend. The wait officially ended when the Browns scooped him up with the 144th overall pick in the fifth round, and there were understandably a ton of questions about why he ultimately ended up being subjected to one of the most precipitous slides in the history of the NFL Draft.
On Monday, Albert Breer entered some new evidence into the record in a Sports Illustrated column where he shed some light on what went down in a couple of interviews Sanders conducted with some unnamed teams.
One concerned a question he fielded at the combine about an interception he threw during his time at Colorado that was seemingly designed to get him to own up to messing up before he declined to do so, with Breer saying:
When asked to explain it, Sanders didn’t take blame. And as they dove deeper into it, and how it might relate to the NFL level, Sanders simply concluded that maybe he and the staff he was talking to might not be a match.
Breer says that’s not the only swing-and-a-miss he fell victim to, adding:
Ahead of another visit, he got an install with mistakes intentionally planted in it—done to see if a quarterback would catch them. Sanders didn’t catch them. A coach called him on it, and the resulting exchange wasn’t pretty.
Shedeur will have the chance to prove his many haters and doubters wrong as he gears up for a battle with the members of a Browns QB room that currently includes Deshaun Watson, Joe Flacco, Kenny Pickett, and Dillon Gabriel, but it sounds like he’s got his work cut out for him.