Albert Breer gives 2 examples of Shedeur Sanders botching pre-draft process

The NFL Draft ended on Saturday, and 48 hours later everyone is still trying to unpack how Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders fell all the way to the fifth round. He was eventually selected by the Cleveland Browns with the No. 144 overall pick, but the shocking slide took over the headlines both before and after he was picked.

The question remains: How did Sanders’ stock fall so far from the time he played his last snap in a Colorado uniform to the draft? Reports have surfaced that his pre-draft interviews with teams didn’t go well, and now we have some examples of why that was.

First, Sanders didn’t take accountability for one of his interceptions during the season, according to Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated.

“A lot of times in combine meetings, teams will have a player’s worst plays ready for him when he enters the room and, along those lines, one had a particularly rough interception teed up for Sanders in Indianapolis,” Breer wrote. “When asked to explain it, Sanders didn’t take blame. And as they dove deeper into it, and how it might relate to the NFL level, Sanders simply concluded that maybe he and the staff he was talking to might not be a match.”

Secondly, a different team planted mistakes in an install package that was given to Sanders before the two sides met. When Sanders didn’t catch the mistakes, things didn’t go well.

“Ahead of another visit, he got an install with mistakes intentionally planted in it—done to see if a quarterback would catch them,” Breer wrote. “Sanders didn’t catch them. A coach called him on it, and the resulting exchange wasn’t pretty.”

Meetings like these, which were likely with teams in need of a quarterback, likely steered them in other directions other than Sanders. The Saints picked Tyler Shough in the second round. The Seahawks took Jalen Milroe in the third round. The Giants even traded back into the first round to take Jaxson Dart from Ole Miss. Even the Browns took Dillon Gabriel in the third round before coming back up to pick Sanders on day three.

These interviews, and other elements of the pre-draft process such as skipping the combine and the All-Star events, certainly contributed to his fall. Now, he will have the chance to prove all of those teams wrong and win the job with the Browns as a rookie.