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revisiting the unfortunate fall of Shedeur Sanders on NFL Draft Day 2025
“Well, he’s his father’s son.”
“Like father, like son.”
“I see so much of your father in you.”
“Boy, your dad sure marked you. He could never deny you are his son.”
And then along came Shedeur.
But first, Deion…
Let’s get this out of the way.
Deion Sanders is iconic—more than that, he is legendary. Better still, he is singular. Few athletes in history have been as iconic as Deion.
In 2017, Jason Kirk wrote an article for SBNation.com titled, Deion Sanders’ NFL Combine was so legendary, people will believe anything about it. His opening lines in that article…
Deion Sanders is one of the greatest athletes we’ve ever seen. You know this already. He became one of the NFL’s few modern two-way players, once hit an MLB home run and scored an NFL touchdown in the same week, and once attempted to play in games in both sports in the same day, and all that stuff.
His legend began well before he was an NFL draft prospect, but everything he did at Florida State or in the pros remains verifiable. It’s the stuff at the mysterious, pre-TV combine that’s really taken on a life of its own and sprouted some quality nonsense, and Sanders (my favorite athlete ever) doesn’t seem to mind all that much.
Most people thought the man who called himself PrimeTime, and others labeled Neon Deion, would not run in the NFL Combine’s 40-yard dash. The combine had not been around that long. Many players were opting out, more than now, for sure. BUt Deion did run.
Here is what Kirk wrote about that:
One of the greatest early combine stories came courtesy of Florida State’s Deion Sanders in 1989. There was talk pre-combine that Sanders wouldn’t run the 40 at all; he later said he would take his medicals, run his 40 and go home.
“Deion gets up to the line and runs his first 40 and everyone has him at 4.3. We figured he was done. He gets up and runs another one, and he runs even faster,” said Gettleman, then a scout for the Bills. “Some people had him at 4.25 [officially a 4.27]. And the funniest damn thing about it was he finishes the 40, continues to run, waves to everybody, goes right through the tunnel and we don’t see him again. We all got up and gave him a standing ovation because so many of those guys wouldn’t run.”
Another story Kirk recounts about Deion and the pre-Draft interview process:
It happened to be the Giants’ room. They set me down and gave me a thick book. This thing was thicker than a phone book,” he said on NFL Network during the last day of 2017’s combine. “I said, ‘What’s this?’ They said, ‘This is our test that we give all the players.’ I said, ‘Excuse me, what pick do you have in the draft?’ They said, ‘10th.’ I said, ‘I’ll be gone before then. I’ll see y’all later.’ That’s a true story.”
If that happened, then Sanders was right. He went No. 5, behind three other future Hall of Famers.
Deion had has swagger like few others. He also has the skillset and awards to back it up.
Let’s break down Deion’s athletic career by sheer facts:
Deion Sanders is one of the most legendary multi-sport athletes in history, excelling in both professional football and baseball. Here’s a breakdown of his incredible accomplishments:
Football Achievements
NFL Career: Played 14 seasons in the NFL for teams including the Atlanta Falcons, San Francisco 49ers, Dallas Cowboys, Washington Redskins, and Baltimore Ravens.
Super Bowl Wins: Won two Super Bowls (XXIX with the 49ers and XXX with the Cowboys).
NFL Defensive Player of the Year: Earned the award in 1994.
Pro Bowl Selections: Selected to the Pro Bowl 8 times (1991–1994, 1996–1999).
All-Pro Honors: Named First-Team All-Pro 6 times and Second-Team All-Pro 2 times.
NFL 1990s All-Decade Team: Recognized as one of the best players of the decade.
Hall of Fame Induction: Inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2011.
Baseball Achievements
MLB Career: Played 9 seasons in Major League Baseball for teams including the New York Yankees, Atlanta Braves, Cincinnati Reds, and San Francisco Giants.
World Series Appearance: Competed in the 1992 World Series with the Atlanta Braves.
Stolen Bases Leader: Finished second in the National League in stolen bases in 1997 with 56 steals.
College & Coaching Achievements
College Football: Played at Florida State University, where he was a two-time unanimous All-American and won the Jim Thorpe Award in 1988.
Coaching Career: Became head coach at Jackson State University (2020–2022) and later Colorado Buffaloes (2023–present).
SWAC Championships: Won two SWAC titles (2021, 2022) and was named SWAC Coach of the Year twice.
Sanders is the only athlete to ever play in both a Super Bowl and a World Series, making him one of the most versatile sports figures ever.
Then along came Shedeur…
It cannot be easy or comfortable to be the son of a legend, to have the burden of one of sports history’s longest shadows over your life. I am not asking anyone to feel sorry for the kid. There are worse things. He could have been the son of a loser—a drunk or a dumpster-diver. He could have lived in the tenements and worn hand-me-down shoes with holes in the soles. All of that.
Still, the burden of expectation, the unrealistic and unfair comparison of every accomplishment to his father’s. When you note that Shedeur is not the athlete his father is, it is like saying Albert Einstein’s kid is stupid compared to his dad, Mozart’s kid is tone deaf, or Pablo Picasso’s boy is a daft artist.
The bar is set too high.
But then you think, “But you are your father’s son! You are his offspring, you have his DNA stamped into your being. Why aren’t you as good as he? You must be a defect!”
Hold that thought.
Sure, the son has his Dad in him, but he is not a clone. He has his Mom, too, which means his ancestral line, his genetic makeup, is only half Dad. I am not blaming the mother here. I am saying, consider the facts.
Before we talk generational talents and their offspring, let’s talk generations…
Let’s break down what it takes to build a person like you, me, Shedeur Sanders…or even his old man, Deion.
The number of grandparents in a person’s ancestry grows exponentially with each generation. Each person has:
2 grandparents in the first generation (their direct grandparents)
4 great-grandparents in the second generation
8 great-great-grandparents in the third generation
The pattern continues as each generation doubles the number of ancestors. So, if we go back 10 generations, the total number of grandparents in that generation would be 1,024.
That means 1,024 direct ancestors at the tenth generation! If you add up all the generations from first to tenth, the total number of grandparents would be 2,046.
Just take ten steps back in your lineage, and it took more than 2,000 DNA contributors to make you!
Let’s take this a step further.
If we go back 20 generations, the number of grandparents at that generation would be 1,048,576.
That means, in the 20th generation, a person would have 1,048,576 direct ancestors! If we add up all the generations from first to twentieth, the total number of grandparents would be 2,097,150.
Twenty paces into the past, and it takes 2 million participants to make you. Or Shedeur.
Shedeur shares half of his genetic heritage with Deion, but only half.
It is too much to expect him to be the same as his dad in every way, or on his father’s level as an athlete.
Ask Bronny James, who is less than a chip off the old block as an NBA player.
The real wonder is not that any son fails to measure up to his father’s achievements when his father is a notable talent. The wonder is that any son ever does.
For some athletes, the added mix of Mom’s genetic soup worked out. Ken Griffey, Jr far outshone his Major League dad. Barry Bonds was greater than daddy Bobby by a long shot and a ton of dingers.
Of course, we are not who we are by nature alone, but also by nurture. Plenty of factors factor in, but the fact is, we expect too much if we expect young Shedeur to shine like Neon or show out like PrimeTime.
Too much.
Sehedeur: The Deion Strut without the Deion Chassis
Shedeur did not inherit his father’s talent, but that is not the end of the world. His talent was enough to propel him to a starting quarterback position at a D1 school, and to have NFL pundit Mel Kiper, Jr (wonder what Senior was like?) rate him as the number one prospect in the 2025 NFL Draft. Kiper had him going top five.
Instead, Shedeur plummeted to number 144, a fifth–round pick! It was an epic fall from grace like few on draft day ever have.
Why?
First, his talent is not deemed by many to be first-round worthy.
“He’s a really good quarterback but doesn’t have traits that jump off the chart,” former NFL All-Pro running back and current NFL Network analyst Maurice Jones-Drew told USA TODAY Sports. “Doesn’t mean he’s not good, but he’s not the fastest and doesn’t have the strongest arm.”
Arm strength and mobility are considered two of Sanders’ main weaknesses when evaluating him as an NFL quarterback prospect. He completed just 47% of his passes beyond 20 yards and 68% of his passes between 10-19 yards at Colorado last season. He also completed 54% of his passes when under pressure last year.
Sanders was sacked 94 times in two seasons at Colorado, the most in FBS during that span.
Second, his attitude sucked, just like his Dad’s.
People put up with Deion’s annoying egocentric bullshit because they had the rarest of talents on their hands. It is fair to note, that even then, they grew weary of the PrimeTime Show. Deion said he learned that he was not going to be offered a new contract by the 49ers, whom he helped win a Super Bowl, by seeing another player wearing his jersey number.
There were murmurings that Deion fanned racial unrest in the Dallas Cowboys locker room. In his book Boys Will Be Boys, author Jeff Pearlman. Wrote about one of the Cowboys’ assistant coaches John Blake telling head coach Barry Sanders that Troy Aikman was picking on black players. This notion allegedly came from a statement Deion Sanders made to Blake.
Deion said, “Why is it that Troy only screams at the brothers? I never see him yell at a white guy.”
Pearlman wrote, “Following the game Blake told Switzer that the Cowboys African-Americans were tired of Aikman’s redneck ways.”
Pearlman recorded two prominent black leaders coming to Troy’s defense.
Michael Irvin said, “I am as black as they come, and I know Troy loves me.”
Charles Haley said, “You have to remember that 90% of the team is black. If he’s going to yell at someone for making a mistake, it’s probably going to be a black guy who made the mistake.”
The point is, teams and teammates often looked the other way where Deion’;s disruptive me-first persona was concerned because, hey, he was Deion.
Deion could blow off NFL interviews as a prospect. He could clown up the Combine.
Shedeur cannot. Shedeur is not his dad.
Word came out that Shedeur may have sandbagged interviews because he wanted to influence where and by whom he was drafted. Unfortunately, he did not have that kind of sway, and at this point, neither did dear old dad, though he thought he did because he is Deion.
The trouble is, he is still Deion in attitude, but without the leverage.
Jared Dubin of CBS Sports wrote:
According to CBS Sports NFL insider Jonathan Jones, the slide is a reflection not of Sanders’ play, but his process.
“This is a repudiation by the NFL of how Shedeur Sanders and those around him handled the entire NFL Draft process,” Jones said. “What you’re not going to tell me — or really anyone who watches football — is that Shedeur Sanders is a worse quarterback than Dillon Gabriel, who was selected in the third round of the 2025 NFL Draft.
Shedeur thought he could do the Deion, and everyone would dance along.
Not so.
Installation issues…
Deion instilled this into his kid. He gave him that entitlement.
Heck, the kid had an okay college career where his dad coached. (He always played where his dad coached.) He did not have a career worthy of the school retiring his number. But that is just what happened. So, while the college honors him like an all-timer, the NFL treats him like a marginal prospect, more of a suspect than a prospect.
Why?
Because, Deion.
Daddy still has pull at the university. He does not have that same pull with the pros. They no longer have to put up with his bullshit because he no longer runs a 4.21 40-yard dash. They don’t feel it necessary to let him use them to build his brand. The benefits are no longer reciprocal.
So, the kid falls because the dad fails to instill in his son a hint of humility.
Well, they both got a healthy dose of it this time around. Didn’t they?
Cleveland does not rock! It is Purgatory for some quarterbacks and Hell for the rest. It is now the home of Deion Lite.
My Rooting Interests
I am not rooting for or against the kid. In a way, I want to see him prove the NFL wrong, the cocky bastards. I want to see him succeed. On the other hand, that would feed the insatiable demon of vainglory, which so many worship as a god.
Long ago, Solomon, who happened to be the son of one of the world’s most legendary athletes, poets, warriors, and kings, King David, left instructions for his sons, and for every son, and every father, for that matter…
Do not boast about tomorrow,
for you do not know what a day may bring.
Let another praise you, and not your own mouth—
a stranger, and not your own lips.
Proverbs 27:1,2
Which is right? Solomon’s advice or Deion’s example?
They cannot both be right. Not on this one.
A little love goes a long way. Show yours with the options below.
