Pro Football Rumors
In 2018, Deion Sanders famously criticized the Browns as a poor place for a quarterback prospect to land. This assessment came before Baker Mayfield‘s inconsistent tenure, one that ended soon after the Deshaun Watson trade, but the cornerback legend/future college HC was not exactly off-base when it came to quarterbacks in Cleveland — at least, the second incarnation of the Browns.
Deion, of course, now has a vested interest in Browns QB development after seeing his son’s historic draft slide ended when Cleveland traded up to No. 144. Shedeur Sanders‘ three-day fall overshadowed this year’s draft, and Deion’s presence was viewed as an accelerant to his son’s tumble. Deion Sanders had said well before the draft “certain cities” would not work as his son’s landing spot. When it became clear the NFL had a much lower view of Shedeur’s prospect value, the Sanderses’ pre-draft game plan looks to have been a misplay.
Regarding Deion’s involvement, however, Browns GM Andrew Berry said it did not play a significant role in the organization’s evaluation of his son.
“I felt like our personal relationship and interactions with Deion, that’s really been all positive from our perspective, and I mean that organizationally, not just me and Kevin (Stefanski),” Berry said, via SI.com’s Charlie Viehl. “But really, all of us who have interacted with Deion and the people out in Colorado. We don’t typically penalize prospects for their parents, so to speak. So I can’t say if that was a factor or not for other teams. But that was not a significant factor for us.”
While Deion Sanders has repeatedly shot down rumors about potentially moving up to the NFL as a coach, he admitted he spoke with Jerry Jones about the Cowboys’ offseason HC vacancy. Rumblings about coaching staffs’ potential leeriness regarding the elder Sanders being a threat to coach his son down the road surfaced as a potential contributor to the draft slide, as some of the teams with QB vacancies feature head coaches on hot seats. Deion signed a Colorado extension this offseason, but the buyout numbers would not impede an NFL team beyond this year. Shedeur’s pre-draft interviews, however, remain the most notable catalyst for his slip from potential top-five pick to fifth-rounder.
We have heard a few post-draft accounts about teams’ dissatisfaction with Sanders’ interviews. His Brian Daboll Combine meeting is not believed to have gone smoothly, and an encounter with an anonymous team concluded with the QB saying he and that team were not a good match. Sanders is being criticized for overplaying his hand, operating like a top-tier prospect — as his father was 36 years ago — while not having the skillset to justify it.
Sanders only met with teams holding a top-seven draft choice at the Combine, and Fox Sports’ Henry McKenna indicates the Colorado QB turned one of those meetings into his own evaluation of the franchise. Sanders asked team brass about its plan to support him. Had Cam Ward made posed such a question,...
