Steelers Now
Former Cleveland Browns defensive back Hanford Dixon thinks Browns quarterback Sheduer Sanders will make the Pittsburgh Steelers regret not drafting him. Sanders, who was projected to go in the first round, dropped all the way to the fifth round in the 2025 NFL Draft.
“They’re gonna pay,” Dixon said on The Hanford Dixon Show. “I guarantee you, Shedeur Sanders is going to make them pay every time we play them. Twice a year, he’s going to make them pay.”
Former Steelers running back Merril Hoge thinks the Steelers have nothing to fear with Shedeur Sanders.
“I see bust written all over him,” Hoge said. “He has absolutely no instinct or feel for pocket awareness. He has an instinct to run. That’s a bad instinct if you’re going to have that in the National Football League.”
Hoge said on WDVE that Sanders is not in the same stratosphere as young QBs C.J. Stroud, Jayden Daniels and Joe Burrow. NFL teams obviously agreed with Hoge’s evaluation.
“That’s the skill set you’re looking for,” Hoge said. “He ain’t even close, he ain’t even in the ballpark. … There’s some toughness to him I like, but how he moves, he ain’t going to put fear in anybody.”
Character concerns are another issue with Sanders. The New York Giants’ Brian Daboll was reportedly one coach who had negative experience with him in the pre-draft interviews.
“Shedeur didn’t have a great interview with Brian Daboll in a private visit,” Todd McShay of The Ringer said. “An install package came in. Preparation wasn’t there for it. [He] got called out on it. Didn’t like that. Brian didn’t appreciate him not liking it.”
An unnamed coach even told NFL Media that his interview with Sanders was “the worst formal interview I’ve ever been in in my life.
College football analyst Ross Tucker shared a story about Sanders skipping the production meeting ahead of Colorado vs. Colorado State this past season.
“We weren’t really given a reason but we did not talk to Shedeur at the production meetings, which as you know, starting quarterback, especially high profile player like that, very unusual. I walk out of the hotel and there’s a pickup truck in front of the hotel and Shedeur is just sitting in the back of the pickup truck,” Tucker said on the Dan Patrick Show.
“It just made me wonder, Dan, people asked me, NFL people asked me after that game, ‘what did you think of Shedeur?’ And I said, ‘I didn’t get to talk to him.’ Maybe he’s the greatest kid ever, maybe he’s a bad kid. I don’t know, but I told them the story and they just kind of nodded their head. And it just made me wonder Dan, how many stories are there like that in which Shedeur did things that were not customary, he did things non-traditionally, it certainly seemed like that was the deal with a lot of the combine interviews and meetings with teams. And especially at that position, I...
