Mike Greenberg didn’t think ESPN overdid it with the Shedeur Sanders coverage during the 2025 NFL Draft.
Then again, Greeny wasn’t in the chair on Saturday.
That wasn’t Greeny’s stage. Saturday belonged to Rece Davis, and things got tense. Davis went back and forth with Mel Kiper Jr. over his unwavering praise of Shedeur Sanders, pushing back once Kiper turned the conversation into a broader indictment of how NFL teams evaluate quarterbacks. It wasn’t a screaming match, but it wasn’t nothing either.
That said, for some, ESPN seemed a little too eager to make Sanders the story, whether he was actually being considered by a team on the clock or not.
Greenberg, though, stood by the network’s approach. In a recent appearance on the Awful Announcing Podcast with host Brandon Contes, he broke down the internal plan for handling Sanders’ coverage. And it wasn’t as haphazard as it may have seemed.
“We knew going in that this was a possibility; I’ll tell you what the plan was,” Greenberg told Contes. “So we knew he was either going to be drafted three by the Giants, or he wasn’t. And the likelihood was that he was not.”
From there, Greenberg explained how ESPN plotted its coverage around the logical landing spots. The Jets? Out. Raiders? Out. The Saints at nine? Maybe. But once New Orleans passed, there was a lull.
“So, our game plan was we’ll talk about it until nine. If he doesn’t go at nine, there’s pretty much a vacuum until 21, when the Steelers pick. And I think if you go back and look at it, I don’t believe we said his name from the time the ninth pick was made from the time the 21st pick was made. Whatever that is, that’s a third of the night. His name was not spoken. Then, when we got to the Steelers, it felt like you would not be doing your job if you didn’t say, ‘Okay, is this the spot they’re going to take Shedeur Sanders?’ They don’t. And then I think we sort of touched on it a few times as the night went on. Like, could we see a trade-up here? But we really didn’t talk about it that much.”
The second night is a different story.
“The second night when it started really snowballing, I think it would’ve been journalistically irresponsible — if that doesn’t sound ridiculous in this context — not to talk about it at least a little,” Greenberg says. “I mean, it was the most astonishing thing that has happened in the draft, forgetting my five years, that I can ever remember. This is a player that, at one point in the process, people thought he was going to go in the top five, and he wound up going in the fifth round. There was obviously a lot more going on than just his ability. Because there was not one evaluation. I read every mock draft. I read every word of every evaluator wrote or spoke in the four months leading up to the draft. There’s not one person who didn’t think, at worst, that he was a second-round talent.
“So, for a second-round talent at that position to go in the fifth round is a monumental story. So I think to cover it thoroughly and fully and enthusiastically — if that’s the right word — was 100 percent the right thing to do. Too much, I suppose, is in the eye of the beholder. But, you know, I think we had to cover it. And I remain completely astonished by it. I think the pendulum completely swing on him for people viewing him as sort of a cocky young person that they were rooting against to now, everyone is rooting for him, because of everything that happened. And I think he’s at worst a second-round pick masquerading as a fifth-round pick. I think he’ll be the starting quarterback in Cleveland this year. And I think he’s going to be a really good player.”
You can argue about airtime. You can argue about narrative focus. But the Shedeur Sanders slide was the story of the draft, and ESPN treated it that way. You don’t need to agree with every segment or every mention to acknowledge the moment. A high-profile quarterback, coached by his Hall of Fame father, got iced out of the first three rounds.
It was a calculated response to a quarterback with a second-round grade falling into Day 3 for reasons no one in the industry could fully explain.
And still can’t explain.
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