To be clear, “The Shield” remains all-powerful, and 99.9 percent of draft prospects have zero control over their futures.
Deion Sanders was one of the greatest athletes to ever grace a football field. Some 20 years after he did his last “Deion Shuffle,” defensive backs still occasionally pay homage by breaking out the celebration dance. But, although legendary, he was never bigger than “The Shield.” No player is. Yet, the proud father — ever confident in his own word and Shedeur’s abilities — lost sight of that as he tried to strong-arm his son into the best possible situation. He touted him as a sure-fire top-five pick. He threatened to have Shedeur, as the phrase goes,
pull an Eli Manning if an undesirable team drafted his son. He ticked off NFL decision-makers.
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Sanders instilled in his son a strong sense of self-belief. But because the Prime Time way borders on the extreme, Deion also passed onto Shedeur an off-putting air that NFL talent evaluators perceived as arrogance and entitlement.
With Deion guiding him every step of the way, Shedeur (who has never had anyone but his father as his head coach) opted out of combine workouts, like elite quarterbacks tend to do, as if he had nothing to prove. He bombed multiple team interviews, prompting assessments that he was either sandbagging them to ensure that certain teams didn’t draft him or that he simply lacked respect for the process and/or the men sitting across from him.
If there’s one thing NFL owners, general managers and head coaches detest even in this modern age, it’s a player who doesn’t kiss the ring. Rarely are signs of disrespect and arrogance brushed aside — especially if that player doesn’t possess elite skills, which most NFL talent evaluators agree, young Sanders does not.
And that brings us to the second lesson: NFL-employed talent evaluators and their media counterparts often view players through drastically different lenses.
Deion Sanders wasn’t the only person touting his son as a top-five pick. Many media draft analysts — perhaps swayed by Deion’s assessments and overestimating teams’ levels of desperation in a down year for quarterback prospects — rated Shedeur as a sure first-round pick. NFL executives, scouts and coaches — the only talent evaluators whose opinions truly matter — did not. And it wasn’t just because of the ego issues.
Most coaches and front office members keep their thoughts very close to the vest leading up to the draft. A few didn’t hesitate to crush Sanders for how he handled himself in some interviews, and they also didn’t mind (anonymously) sharing red flags they saw in his game: Holds onto the ball too long. Doesn’t play with good rhythm. Has just average arm strength and athleticism. A few evaluators, so put off by the way the player carried himself, gave him a late-round to undraftable grade. Were they letting their egos or feelings get in the way? Perhaps to a degree.
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More muted evaluators chose to chalk Sanders’ behavior up to the influence of his father, and they also noted that no teammate had ever said a bad word about the quarterback. Skill-wise, they didn’t view Sanders as beyond repair, but they didn’t see elite traits.
Asked for an assessment of Sanders’ pro day performance in early April, one NFL talent evaluator in attendance — speaking on condition of anonymity so he could provide an honest answer — said: “Solid, efficient workout. Nothing special or bad.” Another from a different team, when asked for his pre-draft assessment of Sanders, described him as “talented, good movement, can process and read defenses.” But neither executive viewed him as worthy of a first-round pick.
Need to bleach out….
no mention of the Mannings of course because only bauce has the “privilege” of moving that way lmao
www.nytimes.com
