Talent evaluators from 32 teams passed on Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders through four-plus rounds and 143 selections of the NFL draft over the weekend. It should be noted that the Cleveland Browns’ talent evaluators were among those who passed on Sanders — that is, until they selected him in the fifth round, 144th overall.
If you are a Browns fan, then you have to hope that the talent evaluators from 32 teams, including the Browns, are wrong. And Mel Kiper is right.
The Browns took Colorado quarterabck Shedeur Sanders in the fifth round of the 2025 NFL Draft.
Kiper, 64, has been a draft analyst at ESPN for more than 40 years. He was doing his thing when the draft was merely content that ESPN needed to fill on-air time, like slow-pitch softball, badminton and Australian rules football. Over the decades, the “E” in Entertainment and Sports Programming Network has become more important than the “S.” And the NFL draft, a months-long reality television series that goes from pro days through the combine to the extravaganza itself, is the classic example.
Kiper, the chief content provider, has done as much as anyone to create this industrial monster. You know what? He hasn’t changed. Everyone else has. He does what he does. Now, he’s great television — and he trends — if and when one of his takes is bold and/or controversial.
Anyone who has been doing anything like Kiper for as long as he has been doing it — if there is anyone like him, which is an open-ended question — is going to swing and miss from time to time. Kiper famously said in 2010 that he’d retire in eight years if Jimmy Clausen wasn’t a successful quarterback. He missed on Ryan Leaf in 1998 (but wasn’t alone). He posited that Ricky Stanzi would have the best career of any QB in the class of 2011 and predicted that Johnny Manziel would be the No. 1 overall pick in 2014. We could go on here with his misses at quarterback, not to mention the other 21 positions. (Special teams notwithstanding.)
Mel Kiper Jr. has been a draft analyst for ESPN for more than 40 years.
Kiper has made a career out of a hobby. He has helped to expand two multi-billion-dollar industries, pro football and its television arm. He’s one of the hardest-working people in show business. While he’s almost always entertaining because he’s so passionate about what he does, he is not always right. Who is?
Kiper had Sanders as the No. 5 overall prospect and the No. 1 quarterback available. The NFL disagreed, emphatically and repeatedly, through 143 picks over four-plus rounds. Sanders slid all the way to the fifth round, where, for some reason, the Browns found “value” in him. By then, Kiper was quite agitated, and he started dropping references to Tom Brady (a sixth-round pick, No. 199 overall, in 2000).
If you followed the draft, even just cursorily, you know that there were all kinds of reads on Sanders, from his abilities as a thrower of the football to his strengths as a leader of men to his approach to team interviews. There was also a certain calculus when it came to projecting a QB who has had just one head coach — his father, Deion Sanders, a singular athlete of his era and a genius coach until he wasn’t a genius anymore. Neon Deion is a sideshow in his own right. Soon enough, Vegas will post over-under odds on the date when Papa Sanders places his first phone call to Browns coach Kevin Stefanski to make suggestions (one word for it) on best practices for QB development.
General manager Andrew Berry and Stefanski conducted what was a strategically sound draft through the early rounds. As Day 1 turned to Day 2 turned to Day 3, you could almost hear owner Jimmy Haslam, whose gifts to Browns fans include Johnny Football and Deshaun Watson and Lionel Messi, whispering in the ears of his brain trust: “Can we take him now? Huh? How about now? C’mon.” The last thing Berry and Stefanski need is another carnival ride and, to that end, they managed to steer clear of the midway through four-plus rounds.
Maybe it’s not a terrible bet. If Kiper is right and nobody in the NFL knows anything about drafting quarterbacks — and if you look at the Browns, he’s right — then Sanders might be a steal at No. 144.
Maybe Oregon’s Dillon Gabriel (third round, No. 94 overall) is the answer.
My goodness.