Shedeur Sanders has finally found an NFL home.
After a winding evaluation process that cast him as one of the NFL draft’s biggest mysteries — and following a three-round slide that saw him bypassed by multiple QB-needy franchises — the Colorado Buffaloes quarterback was chosen in Saturday’s fifth round by the Cleveland Browns. Taken No. 166 overall, the pick comes following a draft slide that stunned even some of his most critical evaluators.
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It also comes in the wake of a last-minute spate of controversy earlier this week, after NFL Network quoted multiple anonymous league sources who hammered Sanders with sharp criticism over his level of play and pre-draft interviews. While the critiques were not the first for Sanders in this process, the nature of some of the comments — including calling him “entitled” and “not very good” as a player — drew a spate of negative reactions both inside and outside of league circles.
It’s unlikely that report was what ultimately impact Sanders’ draft stock, but one former general manager who scouted Sanders in the 2023 and 2024 NFL draft remarked Saturday that his slide “felt personal”. To that end, Sanders watched himself get bypassed multiple times by several franchises with some level of pressing quarterback need — including the Cleveland Browns, New York Giants, Las Vegas Raiders, New Orleans Saints and Pittsburgh Steelers. After the first three rounds, five quarterbacks were chosen in front of him: Miami’s Cam Ward to the Tennessee Titans, Mississippi’s Jaxson Dart to the Giants, Louisville’s Tyler Shough to the Saints, Alabama’s Jalen Milroe to the Seattle Seahawks and Oregon’s Dillon Gabriel to the Browns.
That slide finally ended Saturday, with Sanders now joining a Browns team depth chart that includes Gabriel, Joe Flacco and Kenny Pickett.
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