SHEDEUR SANDERS ISN’T A RACIAL ISSUE — ASK TRUMP — WHEN HIS PLAY IS FLAWED
Anyone who says the NFL attacked DEI must realize why Sanders went in the fifth round to Cleveland: He lacks arm power and mobility and must develop at $1.1 million a season, far less than his NIL pay
In any outcry about diversity, equity and inclusion, President Trump is eyeballed much like the abominable snowman. Today will shock his haters. Please reassess assumptions, America, that he would treat the snubbed and mortified Shedeur Sanders in the same self-boycotting mode as Colin Kaepernick.
It startles racial finger-pointers that Trump and Mel Kiper, of all people, share feelings of dismay that The Quarterbacking Son Of Deion wasn’t chosen in the first four rounds of the NFL draft. Can you believe Sanders is pressured to make a roster this summer? That he’ll be paid, as a fifth-rounder, between $4.6 million and $4.4 million in a four-year deal — significantly less than the $6.5 million he made last year via NIL at Colorado? A star with a $200,000 Maybach heads to a developmental program with the Cleveland Browns?
A robust case attacking DEI, right? Lambaste social media. Isn’t this an all-time slur of a sports figure? Won’t Stephen A. Smith have months of shrieking? Well, no.
How about doing homework on Trump, who is in complete support of a Black player and a famous Black head coach and can’t understand why he went 144th? This is not a racial issue. This is about Sanders not being nearly as good as he thinks, despite the President’s anger.
“What is wrong with NFL owners, are they STUPID?” Trump wrote on social media. “Deion Sanders was a great college football player, and was even greater in the NFL. He’s also a very good coach, streetwise and smart! Therefore, Shedeur, his son, has PHENOMENAL GENES, and is all set for Greatness. He should be ‘picked’ IMMEDIATELY by a team that wants to WIN. Good luck Shedeur, and say hello to your wonderful father!”
Compare his words to his 2017 speech, when Trump thought football players who kneeled during the national anthem — with Kaepernick as the sideline leader — should have been dismissed by the league. “They’re ruining the game. That’s a total disrespect of our heritage. That’s a total disrespect of everything that we stand for,” Trump said. “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, who’d say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired.’ ’’
So enough with the bogus similarities. Trump happens to believe franchises are dead-wrong about Sanders, whose brashness was a product of Coach Prime and included wearing an Audemars Piguet watch before games. He has an average throwing arm and was flawed as an immobile performer, with 94 sacks beating up his body. For the Browns to take a gamble is to risk commotion in their locker room — teammates, media — and constant tirades from Deion in Boulder. Cam Ward was drafted first. Jaxson Dart was drafted 25th. Friday night, Sanders watched again from Texas as Tyler Shough went to New Orleans, Jalen Milroe went to Seattle and Dillon Gabriel went to Cleveland.
The Browns also have Sanders, who will compete against Gabriel as a backup while 40-year-old Joe Flacco and twice-traded Kenny Pickett compete for the starting job. Yet he was ignored six times by the Browns and spurned by the Pittsburgh Steelers, who have Mason Rudolph while waiting foolishly for Aaron Rodgers.
“Thank you (to) the Browns organization for giving me a chance. That’s all I need,” Sanders said in a video Saturday afternoon, after he danced with his brother and jumped into a swimming pool. "I'm extremely grateful for the opportunity throughout everything. I don't ever focus on a negative or even think about the negative because the positive happened so fast.”
On TikTok, he and his father were appalled.
“I know what’s going on,” Deion said. “I like to have hope and I trust God.”
“This ain’t God,” Shedeur responded. “This the devil!”
Naturally, Stephen A. made the Kaepernick association. Is this his latest try to gain support — uggggh — for an expected presidential run in 2028? “This is a damn disgrace. How in the hell is (Sanders) not off the board, not drafted yet?” Smith wrote on social media. “Y’all still think this doesn’t have anything to do with teams hatin on (Deion). This kid is a first-rounder. In a different way, this is Kaepernick all over again … being kept out. A damn disgrace. I don’t care what anyone says!”
Notice how Trump didn’t mention Kaepernick. Later, Smith wrote, “Someone just texted me this message and they are absolutely correct: ‘This is a bad look for the NFL. This feels like Kaepernick-level collusion.’ All the hard work the NFL office puts into eradicating these kinds of perceptions, only to turn around and watch as the OWNERS look like they’re colluding, messing up everything. What has been done to Shedeur will outshine everything else in this draft. We’ll never believe this is about just talent evaluation again.”
Teams were loathed by Sanders’ attitude at the league combine and don’t want to deal with constant phone calls from his father. Personal? It’s truth. The quarterback position is tricky enough to deal with intense family pressures. If Shedeur is wise, he’ll use his massive slide and prove critics wrong. Friday night, Browns general manager Andrew Berry commented: “All I can say is this. The time that we spent with Shedeur and what he’s done throughout his college career is impressive. He’s an impressive young man. He’s a really good quarterback. Sometimes fit comes into play. It’s less about where you get picked than what you do after you get picked. Getting to know him over the course of the spring, he has a ton of resolve.”
The next day, Berry invested in the resolve. He traded his 166th and 192nd picks to Seattle and moved up to take Sanders. “I can’t speak to why the market priced him the way it did. We had our own internal evaluation. … Once it got to a price we felt was a pretty steep discount, it just made sense,” Berry said. “It wasn’t necessarily the plan going into the weekend to select two quarterbacks. We talk often about quarterback being the most important position in the sport. He’s highly accurate, can play well from the pocket. You know, very productive college career. We do believe in the ‘best player available’ and positional value. And you know we didn’t necessarily expect him to be available in the fifth round.”
No one did, except the franchises that rejected him. “He's gonna, like there'll be this chip on his shoulder, and beware because this guy is going to play in this league,” said Denver coach Sean Payton, who has Bo Nix at the position. “I think we all are surprised, and yet the talent — holy cow, if you're a team that needs a quarterback.”
Said Jerry Jones, who has Dak Prescott as owner of the Dallas Cowboys: “I watched two or three ballgames with (Shedeur). So with my knowledge, I know where the character is there and, boy, it is great character. It is an unbelievable competitive winning character for sports. OK? And so I can tell you that. I don't know how many scouts have visited with me about the character of the Sanders group, but they should because it is absolutely up with the very best there's ever been in sport.”
A prankster found him Friday evening, speaking on the phone to a smiling Sanders and pretending to be the GM of the New Orleans Saints. “This is Mickey Loomis here. … It’s been a long wait, man. We’re gonna take you with our next pick right here, man.”
“Yes, sir, let’s be legendary,” Sanders said. “I’m good, been waiting on you.”
“But you’re gonna have to wait a little bit longer, man. Sorry about that,” the caller said before hanging up.
The guy was a clown, even though Sanders was given the phone a day earlier and told only NFL teams had the number. Was it someone from a front office? “I don’t know who that was. Nobody got this number, though,” Sanders said. Then he told his brother, Shilo: “We got time still. Whenever I get picked, we gonna turn it up.”
Watching on a nearby couch, Deion Sanders saw the Saints select Shough at No. 40. “Wow,” he said. “Wow.”
Wow.
“People are morons,” Browns coach Kevin Stefanski said. “It’s sad.”
Shedeur’s tone has changed in just two months. In February, he said: "We went from Jackson State to Colorado and changed two programs back to back. So, you don't think I could come to an NFL franchise and change the program again? It's history. We've done it again. It's always going to repeat itself.” Now he hopes he can survive the final cut. Forget about Rodgers and Dan Marino. This is the longest wait in NFL history and will remain part of his career legacy.
“Thank you GOD,” Sanders posted on X.
Tom Brady went No. 199 in 2000. Difference being, he wasn’t supposed to be drafted high. Geno Smith needs a backup in Las Vegas, where Brady had the opportunity to pick Sanders seven times. Each time, he said no.
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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.