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Shedeur Sanders Isn't Being Blackballed — He's Being Tebowed

Originally posted on Athlon Sports | By Doug Farrar | Last updated Apr 25, 2025 11:59 PM ET

Depending on how you feel about Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders and his NFL potential, you're either utterly aghast at the fact that Sanders is still undrafted after the first three rounds of the 2025 NFL draft, or you're of the opinion that the young man is getting what he deserves.

Based on the tape and nothing else, Sanders projects as a decent NFL quarterback at best. He'll need some seasoning at the next level, but he did enough as a deep passer and when under pressure (which was pretty much all of the time) to make me think that he could he a Jared Goff-style system quarterback in the right environment. It's exceedingly difficult to insist emphatically that Sanders isn't work a shot in the first three rounds based on what he's done on the field. Sanders would get better protection and better route concepts in the NFL, because the basics couldn't be much worse.

There is a legitimate NFL quarterback in there, if you can dig it out amongst all the screens, go routes, laughable blocking, and Sanders' tendency to drift in the pocket.

So, why is Sanders still waiting? There are some who will tell you that the NFL is trying to teach him a lesson in humility as the NFL once did to Colin Kaepernick in the most base way possible — by refusing to let him into the club at all.

I was one of Kaepernick's most vocal advocates from Day 1, and I don't believe that Sanders is suffering that fate. If you wind up on the wrong side of the league in a political sense, that's an entirely different matter. I do think that there's an element of worry that Sanders' NFL team will have to deal with father Deion speaking up on every yelly morning show every time something goes wrong for his son.

Whether that's justified or not.

The real problem, in my opinion, could be seen in the actual first-round draft coverage. ESPN's Mel Kiper, one of the industry's most respected analysts for good reason, went off the rails with a pro-Sanders rant that threw that network's coverage into a tizzy.

Here’s 9 minutes of Mel Kiper complaining about how Shedeur Sanders didn’t get picked in the 1st round of the draft last night…

Rather than focusing on and celebrating those who were selected, Kiper—among others—turned it into the Sanders watch party

pic.twitter.com/e4vkhGgeOr
— BarnBurner Sports (@BB__Sports) April 25, 2025

Over and over on both ESPN and the NFL Network, prospect after prospect who did hear their names called from the podium got about one minute on their own stories, and then, more often than not, the story went back to the Sanders slide.

Even more than political outrage or helicopter parents, the NFL doesn't appreciate being told what to do in the court of public opinion. And for the most accurate similar story, we may have to go back to Tim Tebow, who became the league's biggest story for a stretch of time that far outstripped his actual football relevance. The Denver Broncos had two seasons of Tebow in 2010 and 2011 in which Tebow completed 47.3% of his passes, but every completion was portrayed as the second coming of something by his fanatical fanbase.

If you wanted to align that particular fanaticism with certain other American tendencies in the last few years, you would not be entirely incorrect.

So. maybe the thing that's getting in Shedeur Sanders' way, while he's simply trying to prove himself at the next level with whatever degree of "arrogance" or "entitlement" involved, is the simple fact that he's not seen as a player worth the distractions that will eventually pop up over and over. That is a value judgment on Sanders' play to a point, because if he played quarterback like his father played cornerback, one NFL team would spit the bit and put up with it.

But this isn't Colin Kaepernick-style collusion. It is far more likely the fact that NFL teams have enough of their own current circuses without knowingly taking on another. Whether that's fair to Sanders or not, that's what he'll have to transcend in the mind of one shot-caller before he finds a home in the NFL.

This article first appeared on Athlon Sports and was syndicated with permission.

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