DEION SANDERS APPLIES THE ANTI-CALEB RULE TO PROTECT HIS SON IN THE DRAFT

Instead of climbing from a trash heap like Caleb Williams in Chicago, Sanders will infuriate NFL executives by protecting Shedeur and Travis Hunter and making sure they land with the right franchises

     Imagine a world, if we must, where transfer portals took down the NFL draft. Imagine a player using the NIL function of college sports — compensation via names, images and likenesses — to challenge the Sherman Antitrust Act. That way, the historically shabby Bears might never keep or develop a player.

     The Caleb Williams Rule, we’d call it. Let’s say he uses this offseason and deems the New York Giants as his next franchise. Should we put such a ploy past him? Last summer, Williams asked Halas Hall not to use the franchise tag when his contract expires. Let’s assume he already was pondering a departure from Chicago after four years, or before then, with the tag preventing players from leaving in free agency. The Bears said no.

     Why not move now, as a forward thinker? Those tainted McCaskeys no longer could continue bad tricks as owners. They’d lose forever. And isn’t this, dare I ask, the grand plan of Deion Sanders? Rising again as coach of 17th-ranked Colorado, he will charge forward against negative league persuasions and try to make sure his son, quarterback Shedeur Sanders, lands with the proper team. Same goes for a prime Heisman Trophy candidate, dual threat Travis Hunter. They could be two of the top three picks in Coach Prime’s draft.

     Goodbye, Cleveland. Goodbye, Carolina. Goodbye, Tennessee. Goodbye, New York Jets. Sanders wants Shedeur to land with the Las Vegas Raiders, whose primary owner, Mark Davis, likes the kid with Tom Brady is a minority owner. Deion will try damned hard to push him there this winter, as commissioner Roger Goodell and owners shriek louder than they did when John Elway bolted Baltimore for Denver and Eli Manning bolted the Chargers for the Giants.

     “Yeah, but I’m not going to do it publicly. I’ll do it privately,” Sanders told Fox Sports. “I’m gonna be Dad until the cows come home, and with Travis as well.”

     What does he want from a team?

     “Somebody that can handle the quarterback he is and somebody that can handle — understanding what he’s capable of,” Sanders said. “Someone that has had success in the past handling quarterbacks or someone and an organization that understands what they’re doing. Not just throwing you out there amongst the wolves if you don’t have the support and the infrastructure of the team. Forget the (offensive) line. He’s played with lines that weren’t great, but he’s been able to do his thing. But just the infrastructure of the team and the direction of where we’re going.”

     He was referring to the Bears, of course, though he wouldn’t say it. The Caleb Rule is intact as Sanders ponders Vegas and likes coach Antonio Pierce, while some wonder if Sin Deion would be wooed to Sin City. “I love what (Pierce) brings to the table. I don’t want him to lose to the point where he has the ability to get Shedeur,” he said in July, before the Raiders started 2-7. “Let’s get that straight. I don’t want that to happen, I really don’t, but I wouldn’t mind if, some kind of way, it happens that (Shedeur) is here.”

     Shedeur spoke to Davis, who owns the Las Vegas Aces, during the WNBA playoffs. The quarterback also spoke of Brady’s investment in the Raiders: “I think it was a great decision, great thing for him. He did everything he can on the field. So off the field, he’s, I guess, indulging in a lot of different things now.

     “But they said he’s looking for a quarterback, so we’ll see.”

     Where would you rather be in your young 20s? Playing in Vegas while being trained by Brady? Or struggling in Chicago while being trained by Shane Waldron and, now, Thomas Brown? And who next season? How pathetic are the Bears? “Too nice of a guy,” veteran receiver Keenan Allen told the Chicago Tribune. “OTAs, camp, we fell into a trap of letting things go and not holding people accountable and that’s a slippery slope. Just professionalism and doing things the right way from the beginning.”

     Locked in at a fully guaranteed $39 million, Williams has been sacked 38 times and occupies the league’s worst passer rating in the last two games. He misses one target after another. Where is the generational star? For now, he is trying to fix himself when Brady can’t offer a word, even if he’s in Chicago to broadcast the Packers game. Yet he can help Shedeur in a Raiders uniform, a sham of whatever the NFL offers as ethics.

     “It’s frustrating,” Williams said. “Obviously, there are passes that you miss and are going to miss throughout your career that you’ll want back or that you want to make. That’s why you work hard at it in practice and throughout the weeks. I think I’ve done well protecting the football, not turning it over. But I think getting on a better page with the guys throughout the week of practice, talking about routes even if we don’t get maybe the (defensive) look we’re going to talk about and discuss, on the sideline or after practice or anything like that. At least hearing it, so when it happens in a game, I’m able to rip it and throw it.”

     Rip it, throw it. Isn’t he Caleb Williams? And he had nothing to do with firing Waldron? “I don’t get to choose the decision, nor do I get to choose whether the decision is good, bad or indifferent,” he said. “My job is to listen.”

     In due time, his job will be to doink Chicago.

     Start his own transfer portal. Why not?

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.