Shedeur Sanders is Starting to Sound and Act a Whole Lot Like His Father

So, pardon me if I do not feel sorry for Shedeur Sanders. I will not shed a tear. Does he forget that he went 4-8 in 2023 and looked very pedestrian in those losses?

Sanders does not believe that other quarterbacks could handle the pressure of "Growing Up Sanders."

"You put any of those guys in my situation. They're not doing that."

Sanders went one better and said that he was the best quarterback in the country in 2023 and that he would be the best quarterback in the 2024 NFL Draft. 

One problem, Shedeur didn't declare for the draft and decided to stay at Colorado and play Daddy ball for one more season.

Too bad. 

We will never know where he stacks up amongst the crew that declared or know how the scouts compare him to others like Caleb Williams or Drake Maye. Instead of backing up these claims and declaring, Shedeur elected to stay in school and play one more season where everything is catered to him by his head coach/father before offering his wares to the league.

My question is, "What is he afraid of?" Does Shedeur have separation anxiety? Isn't he a little old for that? Is he going to tell NFL clubs that whoever drafts him has to take Prime with him?

"I am biased, but I don't see a quarterback that's better than me," the younger Sanders said to Tom Dierberger of Sports Illustrated. "I don't see a QB that went through as much adversity as me, that had four different Offensive Coordinators in four years. Coming from an HBCU, coming to a Power Five, having real pressure on me."

I guess this is where I am supposed to reach for the Kleenex. 

If you want to be the best, you have to compete with the best. I would like to see him play with his 2024 contemporaries in the all-star games and perform with them at the combine. Let's compare apples to apples.

However, we will never see it. Instead, he's running back to the protection and safety of his father.

Sanders, who threw for 3,230 yards, 27 touchdown passes, and just three interceptions in 11 games for the Buffaloes last season, still believes he would be first off the draft board.

Heresy, I say.

“You put any of those guys in [my] situation, they’re not doing that. I respect their game," Shedeur said. "I respect what they’re doing because to be able to be a first-round draft pick, to be able to have success on the field, it takes a lot of hard work and determination and everything.

“But the most pressure and the safest bet is me.” 

Sanders could not compete with the likes of Williams, Maye, Jaylen Daniels, or any of the top six or seven quarterbacks in this draft. He is also no Michael Penix, Jr, Bo Nix, or Spencer Rattler.

They would perform circles around him, and Sanders would find himself to be a third-round pick at best. One of his Pac-12 contemporaries was Cam Ward, and he was told he would not go on the first day in 2024. Young Sanders will not be a first-round pick in 2025, either. 

He is not all that and a bag of chips. He and Prime padded his stats by having no ground game. He's a run-first quarterback who looks more like Robert Griffin III, who never panned out in the NFL, than he does Lamar Jackson, a true dual-threat quarterback.

This is the same kid that could have gone to any school that he wanted to coming out of high school but decided to follow Papa Sanders to little-known Jackson State in Mississippi. He even played in his father's offense in high school. He has never known what it is like to be coached by anyone other than Deion Sanders. How coachable is he, and can he take direction from someone who has a different surname? 

We won't know the answer to that until 2025, as Deion's mini-me was not ready to leave the nest.

He set records at Jackson State with Travis Hunter and then left town when Daddy grabbed the bag with all the gold to go to Colorado. Jackson State is a fine institution that deserved better. They scraped and invested in Shedeur and Deion, and when the money ran dry, they both left town and went for the cash.

If he really is the best quarterback in the draft, then why come back?