The Draw Play

For pretty much my entire life I have been a Deion Sanders hater. I find him deeply irritating and arrogant, and also he played for the Cowboys, which is probably the worst part. The only time I have enjoyed Deion Sanders was when he notoriously started defending Eli with his “I believe in Eli” schtick. I could not stand his ego. I could not stand his arrogance. The fact that he could back all of it up with some of the best football you’ll ever see made it so much worse. While I generally like big swagger personalities in my sports, Deion was the one I could never bring myself to truly like. He is just too full of himself. He might be the GOAT sports ego. All of this is to say, this was the funniest NFL draft I have ever watched. By the end of day 2 I did feel bad for Shedeur, but I was filled with absolute glee knowing Deion must have been furious.

So why did Shedeur slide? Honestly? I think a lot of it was Deion’s fault. But not exclusively. This was a complicated confluence of factors all compiling into one kerfuffle. Let’s have fun dissecting it.

HE WAS NOT A GREAT QB PROSPECT FOR THE MODERN NFL
Before draft season really started basically everyone was saying that this was a weak year for Quarterbacks. Had Cam Ward and Shedeur come out last year, both would have been ranked pretty low, around where Bo Nix was. So why did Cam Ward go #1 overall but Shedeur slid? Cam Ward has the physical tools and the potential. The league has changed, and immobile unathletic QBs just aren’t highly valued anymore. Many of the best QBs in the league came into the league as physical specimens that needed a little refinement. Low floor, high ceiling guys. That’s Cam Ward. He’s kind of a dummy, but he’s got the rocket arm and the demeanor that could pan out wonderfully. Look at a couple of the other guys who went before Sanders, like Dart or Milroe. Flawed, athletic prospects who could be molded with high ceilings. Shedeur is the opposite as a prospect. Shedeur is a high floor, low ceiling guy. He is not very athletic or mobile. He’s just…limited. He’s coached well, you can tell he knows the game very well, he’s accurate, he can absolutely run a pro-style offense. But he just…isn’t much more. He feels like a backup guy. Someone who can run your system but will not elevate it. On top of that, he played for a smaller school against weaker competition and was not very impressive. Travis Hunter was the real Atlas of Colorado. Shedeur absolutely has the tools and the brain to work in the NFL, but until the hype meter took over, a lot of the smarter draft pundits had him as a second or third-round guy to start with. A flawed prospect with some skills that might pan out. I have to imagine most NFL scouts had him there as well. We give teams a lot of shit for being dumb, but in many ways they are also smarter than we give them credit for. 

 

HE DID NOT INTERVIEW WELL AND HAD CHARACTER CONCERNS
Swagger in sports is not a negative, despite what your shitty uncle says when a black guy dances after a touchdown. Some kids just have it, and that’s how they operate. Some folks thrive off being loud and boisterous, and a big healthy ego can take a guy pretty far in this field. But there is a point where it crosses a line into sheer arrogance. We had multiple reports of Sanders being a terrible interview. He was apparently rude to teams and garbage at whiteboard stuff (Which actually surprised me, I expected him to be good at that). After the Nebraska game, Sanders threw his offensive line under the bus. Now, let’s be clear, being thrown under a bus might be higher praise than that offensive line deserved, but that’s something we get to say, not Sanders. You do not throw your teammates under a bus. That’s a big character no-no. Nobody was calling Shedeur a leader of men. They were calling him an arrogant dick. Johnny Manziel, another famous arrogant asshole, did not interview poorly. Being a douche alone won’t prevent you from being drafted. But compile this with his limitations as a prospect, his dad, the noise and drama considering his identity, and being a douche did absolutely nothing to help his case. Deion famously walked out of interviews during his draft process if teams were drafting at pick 10 or lower because he knew he wouldn’t be around that late. He got away with that because he was a generational prospect. Shedeur is not. But he acted like it. Confidence is great. Arrogance annoys people. 

 

THE HYPE WAS OVERBLOWN
Take a moment to separate Sanders from his identity. Pretend he’s just a guy named Shad Saunders. No famous dad. Just the exact same guy Shedeur is without the media baggage. Is that guy slipping into the 3rd or later really a surprise or newsworthy? No. Nobody would be freaking out. But Shedeur is Deion’s kid. He’s been hyped up by the media circus for years. ESPN especially seemed hellbent on the Shedeur content farm. Shedeur brings in clicks. He brings attention. Many of us watched in delight as he fell because none of us are immune, even as haters. Mel Kiper was especially notable as an insufferable madman during this process, ranking Shedeur as his #1 and losing his damn mind at every pick that passed. Cam Ward might be the most disrespected #1 pick of all time because ESPN immediately just started talking about Sanders instead as soon as Cam was picked. ESPN and other outlets knew Sanders was attention-getting, so they fed into the Sanders story, and it prevented so many people from admitting who he actually was as a prospect and measuring that hype.

THE NOISE
To supplement the hype problem is the noise problem. Teams do not like noise. A little bit of hype and fun is welcome, but beyond that many places find it an unbearable distraction. The noise itself is not necessarily an issue, Tim Tebow was drafted in the first round, so was Johnny Manziel, and they carried a bunch of noise. But that noise also hurt them, Tebow especially. Tebow was overdrafted by an idiot, and the amount of noise that came with that choice was unbelievable. His career might have lasted a while longer if he could just exist on a team instead of being swarmed for attention. If you are an absolute stud, like Deion Sanders, the noise is bearable. If you are not Deion Sanders, or Cam Newton, or Odell Beckham, etc, the noise is not worth it. This especially becomes a factor as Shedeur slid out of the first and became a backup QB prospect. Do you really want all this noise for a guy who might sit at #2 or #3 on your depth chart? That probably pushed Sanders further than he might have gone otherwise.

THE DEION PROBLEM
After Shedeur slid out of round 2 I started to wonder. After he slid out of round 3, it felt obvious that Deion fucked this up for Shedeur. I feel bad for Shedeur in some ways. He’s a victim of clear celebrity helicopter parenting by an egomaniac. He’s gone wherever Dad wants him to go. It feels like he’s never had the chance to be his own person. Deion is like the dad who tries to get a teacher fired when the teacher gives his child a bad grade or tries to discipline him. If you want a comparison, look at Arch Manning. Arch is another guy who is going to enter the league amidst a fuckton of noise, another prospect who is likely to be overhyped due to his identity and any flaws he might have ignored. But the Mannings haven’t helicoptered Arch quite the same way as Deion. Arch’s dad isn’t the coach of Texas. Hell, the family didn’t push him into Ole Miss or Tennessee, they let him commit to his choice of school. Arch seems like he’s getting at least some ability to become an individual and not the family’s excuse to live vicariously. The Mannings aren’t guilt-free, you can see how they manipulated Eli’s draft scenario for proof, but they haven’t been such overbearing presences the way Deion is. It’s telling that a lot of people half-predicted Deion to pull an Eli/Elway if Shadeur went to the wrong team. Deion spent so much time hyping up his son and being a media magnet that it caused so much of the noise that appears to have damaged Shedeur’s chances. The Cult of Deion that formed just made it worse. Shedeur is inseparable from Deion in a way no other next generation player has ever been. I saw people genuinely wonder if one of the reasons Sanders slid so far was not just because of the noise, but the possibility that anywhere he goes then becomes a target for Deion’s next job. It sounds ridiculous, but then…not as ridiculous as it should sound. If Deion does take an NFL coaching gig, we can all see him going after Shedeur, can’t we? Hell, Stefanski is not in comfortable territory, it might be sooner than we think. The fall was so dramatic that many people have floated the idea of Shedeur being punished by teams to some degree, but I think if that is happening, it isn’t necessarily a punishment of Shedeur. It’s punishment directed towards Deion. To be honest, that was the main reason so many of us were laughing at the slide, because we all find Deion Sanders insufferable and his sadness is our joy. There is also likely a racial element to this, seeing as Sanders (both) are loud, confident, brash black men, but I’m far too white to speak on that.

 

IN CONCLUSION
I actually think Sanders went to the right spot just in an embarassing way. Stefanski’s system is Shedeur friendly and with his only competition being Joe Flacco, Kenny Pickett, and Dillion Gabriel, he’s got a decent chance to prove himself worthy. It must sting that the Browns literally took a different QB first, Dillion Gabriel, before they even took him, but that’s that. They might have done it to keep him from Pittsburgh. If Sanders is genuinely closer to a first-round talent player as projected then this is the steal of the draft. The Browns took a guy many had them drafting at #2 at #144 instead. Sanders, if nothing else, has the ego and the chip on his shoulder to let this drive him, and he might finally have some time to grow as an individual away from daddy provided Deion stays in Colorado for a while. The prank call to Sanders during the draft was absolutely cruel even as someone who was laughing at the slide. Shedeur might be an egotistical dick, but after this draft, there’s a part of me rooting for him. If Shedeur proves everyone wrong, that just gives Deion more shit-talk we can’t argue with.