Colorado coach Deion Sanders [recently sounded off](https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/deion-sanders-pre-draft-attacks-on-shedeur-and-shilo-hurt) on the pre-draft criticism of his son, Browns quarterback Shedeur Sanders. Deion’s complaints overlook one very basic reality.
Shedeur needed someone to properly prepare him for the process.
Sanders decided not to hire an agent. As a result, he didn’t have the benefit of having someone who could help Sheduer as he tried to be taken as high as possible in the draft.
While having an agent isn’t critical to understanding how the pre-draft game works (not having an agent didn’t keep Cam Ward from going No. 1 overall), some players need to hear what an agent has to say regarding how to properly approach interviews and meetings with teams.
It’s a basic question of ensuring that the player takes the situation seriously. The teams want players — especially at the quarterback position — who take everything about the pre-draft process very seriously.
We avoided, and will continue to avoid, trafficking in anonymous opinions disseminated before the draft. There’s too much for a team to gain by stoking a slide that allows that team to draft the player, and there’s too great of a risk that “sources” will use reporters (unwittingly or not) to help poison the well.
In this case, it’s now clear that wasn’t happening. The slippage of Sanders through four-plus rounds operated as a full repudiation of how he handled himself during the pre-draft process.
There was no anti-Shedeur conspiracy at play. Teams want to win. If they can land a highly-marketable player along the way, even better.
But they expect a certain amount of deference to the sorting-hat system. Although Sanders didn’t make a power play to avoid a bad team (indeed, he embraced the idea of being the one to turn around a lost franchise), he treated the process as if he was being recruited, not interviewed. And he had no one to tell him that what he was doing was doing far more harm than good.
There’s a time and a place to be nonchalant. The pre-draft process isn’t it. Teams want players who approach things with a businesslike demeanor. When it comes to the quarterback position, they want to know their guy will be showing up early, staying late, and doing whatever it takes to be successful.
Maybe Shedeur Sanders will do that. His approach to the pre-draft process created a different impression.
It was also important, in hindsight, for Sanders to realize once the attacks began that he needed someone in position to push back on his behalf. It’s one of the reasons for Lamar Jackson’s free-fall to the bottom of round one in 2018. As the likes of Bill Polian pushed the notion that Jackson should change positions, Jackson had no one to push back on his behalf.
Here, Shedeur had no one in place to both defend him against the attacks or to tell him how to reverse the narrative.
In the end, Shedeur didn’t have to pay an agent three percent of his contract. And he ended up with 100 percent of a pie that’s more like half of an uncooked Pop-Tart.
While everything that happens from this point forward is up to him, everything that has happened until now isn’t on anyone but him.