The NFL Draft of 2025 is near completion and perhaps the most discussed story was the drafting or, rather, non-drafting of Colorado Buffalos quarterback, Shedeur Sanders, who rose to a projected first round pick, possibly one of the first five chosen, but then plummeted to the fifth round, number 144 overall pick that the Cleveland Browns finally scooped up.

This has happened before, where a highly touted player suddenly disappeared from all the teams’ drafting charts, only to be plucked after the humbling experiences of having TV cameras focused on him each time he was passed over.

This time is different because Sanders is really, really good. He had a productive two years resurrecting a Colorado school that had underachieved for years before he and fellow Jackson State transfer and Heisman Trophy winner, Travis Hunter, put Boulder on the college football map again.

YouTube screen grab (cropped).

Now, the team isn’t an elite by any stretch of the imagination, but this pair certainly brought respect and legitimacy to the program in the last two seasons, completing this season in the final Top Twenty-Five, at 23rd place, for the first time since 2016.

So why Shedeur’s precipitous drop in viability? What did the draft experts discover about Shedeur in the three months after the season was over that caused such sudden disinterest in all that talent? Why were his talent, athleticism, and football IQ being re-assessed, re-evaluated, and “re-THUNK”?

Even President Trump weighed in on the “Sanders Slight” :

So, what happened?

It’s not race, of course. African-American Cam Ward of the University of Miami was chosen as the first player in the draft.

We know from Shedeur’s NFL Draft that it’s not a lack of football smarts.

Athleticism? Ask scouts about Tom Brady, Joe Montana, or Kurt Warner, who all led their teams to multiple Super Bowls and wins.

My guess is that the real reason Shedeur dropped in the draft is because of something that Trump alluded to in that tweet. Shedeur’s father is NFL great, Super Bowl winner, and Hall of Fame player Deion Sanders—who also happened to coach Shedeur at Jackson State and Colorado.

Deion is, to put it lightly, “colorful and controversial” as a coach. He brought a certain swagger to the NFL, which was reflected in many of the teams he coached.

With that kind of success, Deion might have his eyes on an NFL head coaching gig. The threat he posed to the current head may have weighed heavily on teams tempted to select his son. For them, self-preservation may have led to their ignoring the talented quarterback.

And even if Deion were happy at Boulder or another college football outpost in the near future, it’s possible that NFL teams, GMs, and coaches were afraid that he would become a “helicopter parent,” commenting on their use, misuse, or abuse of his son.

In other words, maybe the real reason nobody took a chance on Shedeur until the Browns did so on the third day of the draft, well into the late stages of the draft, is simply nobody wanted to put up with the excess baggage of having the father of one of your picks telling you what to do with his kid.