After three rounds of the 2025 NFL Draft, Shedeur Sanders is still waiting.
The Colorado prospect, widely considered a first-round talent, has not been selected through three.
So far, 102 picks and five quarterbacks have been taken ahead of Deion Sanders’s highly-touted son.
His draft slide has been historic, and highly controversial, with Stephen A. Smith sharing a theory on the ‘biggest issue’ behind Shedeur’s slide.
After watching the New York Giants trade up to No. 25 on Thursday night to select Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart in Round 1, Sanders on Friday had to stomach even more.
The New Orleans Saints stunningly drafted Louisville’s Tyler Shough, the Seattle Seahawks then took Alabama’s Jalen Milroe, and the Cleveland Browns selected Oregon’s Dillon Gabriel.
Cam Ward, of course, was the first overall pick before all of those quarterbacks came off the board.
Five signal-callers have been taken ahead of Sanders, and his NFL future is now on a knife-edge.
After the second and third rounds of the draft concluded on Friday night, Shedeur took to social media to share a five-word message with his followers.
“Thank you GOD for EVERYTHING,” he wrote on X.
Within minutes, the replies were flooded with support.
“God’s got you,” former NFL quarterback Robert Griffin III wrote.
“Tom Brady was picked at No. 199 during the 2000 NFL Draft. People will say his name forever with reverence. Kurt Warner was UNDRAFTED. Hold your head high, brother,” another fan said.
“You deserve so much better than this. keep your head up,” a third responded.
One of the NFL’s top quarterbacks, Patrick Mahomes, also offered a one-word response to Shedeur’s slide.
While Friday night offered multiple opportunities for teams needing a QB to select Sanders, each opportunity ended without the 23-year-old hearing his name.
The Browns passed on Sanders four times, including twice in four picks in the second round.
Pittsburgh, who have no proven starting quarterback, passed on him for the second time in two nights, while Tom Brady’s Las Vegas Raiders also failed to select Shedeur multiple times.
Amid the Colorado prospect’s shocking fall, Denver Broncos coach Sean Payton — who has known him since he was in junior high school — warned teams who passed over the quarterback so far in the draft should ‘beware’.
“He’s gonna, like there’ll be this chip on his shoulder, and beware because this guy is going to play in this league,” Payton said Friday.
Sanders was the Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year in 2024, and as the son of Hall of Fame cornerback and Colorado coach Deion, he has a huge profile that few college football players before him matched.
Elements of his game have been criticized, of course, including his limited mobility and tendency to hold the ball too long while in the pocket.
But as Sanders continues to fall through the draft, questions about whether his off-field celebrity and immense confidence were off-putting to teams will no doubt dominate conversation.
