It’s a good day to be a fan of Cleveland sports teams, and it’s not simply because their conference champion basketball team, the Cavaliers, absolutely destroyed the Miami Heat in South Florida by the almost embarassing score of 124-87, giving them a virtually insurmountable 3-0 lead in their first round best-of-seven NBA playoff series. That kind of modest detail is best reserved for our sister site, TheDoubleOvertime.com, and since they’re not a personal favorite team of our more hoops-obsessed partner in crime the likelihood of it resonating at all going forward isn’t great. I adore the Heat, but I’m a realist, and yesterday said reality set in like a week-old laundry stain.
No, the real news-worthy story came out of the third and final day of the NFL Draft, which is typically a seven-hour marathon where the final four rounds of seven, the so-called “team-building” segment which usually appeals to hard-core football fans was being conducted in front of a couple of hundred thousand zealots outside the unfrozen tundra of Green Bay’s Lambeau Field. And as the day began to wear on, the story continued to mushroom and threatened to create a national crisis.
For those of you who don’t visit our sister site (and why not?), you’re probably already up on the curious case of Shadeur Sanders, the starting quarterback for the University of Colorado for the past two seasons whose statistics–especially his completion rate–was vaunting him to the top of many pundits’ lists to be an early draftee. The fact that he just happens to be the son of a Hall of Famer, Deion “Primetime” Sanders–who also happened to be his coach at Colorado and, before that, Jackson State was at one point incidental.
But as we mused on Friday, Shadeur went undrafter on Night One, most to the consternation of many of those pundits. Subsequently, he also went undrafted on Night Two, and that produced perhaps the most unlikely bipartisan agreement we’ve seen in this crazy world in some time.
THE NEW YORK POST’s Joseph
Stephen A. Smith has an uncomfortable theory regarding Shedeur Sanders’ stunning NFL draft freefall. (Sanders) was not selected through the first three rounds of the 2025 NFL Draft after once being a consideration for the No. 1 overall pick. Smith thinks he knows why.
The ESPN star posted to X on Friday night that someone texted him a message he believed was “absolutely correct.” “This is a bad look for the NFL. This feels like (Colin) Kaepernick-level collusion,” Smith wrote with regard to the message. He then went off on how damaging even the talk of collusion is for the NFL.
“All the hard work the NFL League Office puts in to eradicate these kinds of perceptions, only to turn around and watch as the OWNERS look like they’re colluding, messing up everything,” Smith wrote. “What has been done to Shedeur will outshine everything else in this draft. We’ll never believe this is about just talent evaluation again.” He wasn’t done.
“This is a damn disgrace,” Smith wrote. “How in the hell is @Shedeur not off the board, not drafted yet. Y’all still think this doesn’t have anything to do with teams hatin on @DeionSanders. This kid is a first rounder. In a different way, this is Kaepernick all over again…..being kept out. A damn disgrace. I don’t care what anyone says!”
And, for a change, Smith wasn’t the loudest nor loneliest voice among the vox populi. Veteran sportswriter Jay Mariotti, now the author of THE SPORTS COLUMN, posted more specific thoughts on Friday:
The word was out. Do not draft Sanders in the first round or he might disrupt your franchise. Once considered the elite quarterback in this year’s class, he exasperated teams with brashness straight from the Deion playbook. The Pittsburgh Steelers, still waiting foolishly for Aaron Rodgers, drafted 21st on Thursday night. They passed and selected defensive tackle Derrick Harmon, meaning Sanders would slide to the second round in a trickle that exposes his lack of mobility and mediocre arm strength.
This was a harsh shot at Coach Prime. He can entertain and rip other coaches and ridicule media people, but he can’t bamboozle pro experts into thinking Shedeur is an immediate star. A team will select him Friday evening. Until then, some of us will ask about the $40,000 watch — Audemars Piguet Royal Oak 15500 — that he showed off to opposing players before games. Or the $200,000 Maybach he drove to school. Or the rap song, “Perfect Timing,’’ that he recorded and played after touchdowns.
And a friend of mine who happens to be close with numerous professional athletes, including his business partner who played in the NFL, was going live on his decently-followed Facebook feed with similar thoughts, including some passed along to him that invoked what many saw as the ugly truth. “Ain’t nobody gonna draft an uppity n–ger”, he quoted one of his more agitated followers. His words, not mine. And someone who would otherwise be allowed to invoke it–especially considering how ugly a look this was.
But perhaps both the most and least surprising reaction came from an alleged football fan who was enroute to the Vatican City, as HBCU GAMEDAY’s Stephen J. Gaither reported:
The reverberation of the fall of Shedeur Sanders from the first round of the NFL Draft has reached the White House via President Donald Trump.
Trump took to Twitter/X on Friday afternoon to comment on Shedeur Sanders not being picked in the first round on Saturday. “What is wrong with NFL owners, are they STUPID? Deion Sanders was a great college football player, and was even greater in the NFL,” Trump posted. “He’s also a very good coach, streetwise and smart! Therefore, Shedeur, his quarterback son, has PHENOMENAL GENES, and is all set for Greatness. He should be “picked” IMMEDIATELY by a team that wants to WIN. Good luck Shedeur, and say hello to your wonderful father!”
Incredibly, Smith’s potential 2028 opponent was more in lockstep with him than he was with any of his previous three.
The fact that the Sanders endured a fourth round on Saturday without Shadeur’s name being called should give some relief to those that think that knee-bending was again going to be invoked. But finally, at the outset of Round Five, the Cleveland Browns took the plunge. And as the hometown CLEVELAND.com’s Dan Labbe reported yesterday, there were sound football reasons and rationales invoked:
In a vacuum, the Browns trading up to acquire Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders is a smart move. Even his most critical evaluators didn’t see the Colorado quarterback falling all the way to the fifth round.
Selling this as a lottery ticket makes a lot of sense. A fifth-round pick is hardly a long-term commitment to a player or a guarantee of anything more than just a chance to compete to make the roster.
We felt like it got to a point where he was probably mispriced relative to the draft,” GM Andrew Berry said after the Browns picked Sanders. “Really, the acquisition cost was pretty light, and it’s a guy that we think can outproduce his draft slot.”
And as USA TODAY’s Josh Alper reported yesterday, even the man of the hour appeared humble:
Sanders said, via Zac Jackson of TheAthletic.com, that the “main thing” is proving head coach Kevin Stefanski and General Manager Andrew Berry right for picking him after passing on him with their first seven picks. Sanders said that he knows what it will “require for me to come out on top” and that his attention will be on that rather than on any of the negative things have been said about him in recent days. “I would say I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity throughout everything,” Sanders said. “I don’t ever focus on the negative. For me it’s just playing QB, that’s what it’s about.”
And as Alper reinforced, it’s not all that much of an opportunity, at least for now.
Sanders was the second quarterback the Browns have drafted this week and head coach Kevin Stefanski said he thinks “all of our players are competing for starting jobs” when asked about third-round pick Dillon Gabriel’s chances of claiming the job. Sanders is now one of those players and the Browns’ quarterback competition, which also includes Kenny Pickett and Joe Flacco, is going to be a fascinating one to watch.
It is a move that already has inflamed some of Smith’s colleagues, as USA TODAYs’ Chris Bumbaca noted:
(T)he tension building on the ESPN set in Green Bay, Wisconsin, finally combusted. For days, Mel Kiper Jr. — the longtime ESPN draft analyst — couldn’t hide his “disgust” (his words) with the NFL for allowing his top-ranked quarterback in the 2025 class to slip into Day 3 of the draft. And he didn’t hold back after the Browns made their pick. This is not about, ‘Can you play the position?’ This is about, ‘Do we want you to play the position for us?’” fellow analyst Louis Riddick said.
“Why wouldn’t they?” Kiper interjected sharply.
“That’s a whole (different) discussion that we’ve had in many different ways for weeks and months now,” Riddick replied.
“Is he not one of the toughest quarterbacks you’ve ever seen?” Kiper asked.
“Mel … this isn’t about quarterback traits and quarterback characteristics, personal football (characteristics)” Riddick said. “That’s not about this. This is personal.”
And judging by the balance of Kiper’s rant, it was obvious to the viewers watching this play out on live TV that it was pretty personal to him as well:
More talking over each other ensued until Kiper broke through with some sharp words for NFL front offices.
“My point is, Rece, the NFL has been clueless for 50 years when it comes to evaluating quarterbacks,” Kiper said. “Clueless. They have no idea what they’re doing in terms of evaluating quarterbacks. That’s proof. There’s proof of that. They can say, ‘We know exactly what we’re talking about with quarterbacks.’ They don’t.”
Kiper’s been doing the same, first as an independent and then as an ESPN staple almost as long. But as Mariotti opined, the college game has changed irrevocably–and so have its players:
He is the first victim of the Name, Image and Likeness Age. From here on, he is an underdog. Don’t tell his father, who had the vigor to play football and baseball at once…Shedeur? He has been punked. Bosses don’t want to deal with Deion, on the phone every week, and they don’t want to deal with his son.
Rarely has the decibel level of debate about who is currently as low as a fifth-stringer on the depth charts of the only AFC Central team not to make the 2024 playoffs been so amplified.
But had the Browns not stepped up as they did with their move, this could have been a far more protracted and noisier debate. Kaepernick has yet to play in the NFL since he literally bent the knee to the national anthem nine years ago, a move that Fat Orange Jesus did not hide his disdain for then, either. It would seem, at least for the moment, that America’s Number One Football Bro can turn his chubby little fingers toward other topics.
And for that alone, we owe Cleveland sports teams a hearty huzzah, a loud Dawg Pound growl and a debt of thanks. I now might even be inclined to root on the Cavaliers.
Until next time…