Even if you were skeptical that Shedeur Sanders was first-round pick material, you probably didn't expect him to fall this far.
The Colorado quarterback and son of NFL legend Deion Sanders wasn't taken until the fifth round of the 2025 NFL Draft, when the Cleveland Browns selected him on Day 3 with the 144th overall pick.
Sanders' plummet was the biggest surprise of draft weekend; after rumblings that he could be taken as high as the No. 3 overall pick, the 23-year-old was the sixth quarterback off the board and wasn't even the first QB taken by the Browns, who drafted Oregon's Dillon Gabriel in the third round.
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SIGN UP HERE So, what caused Sanders' draft-weekend drop? The MMQB's Albert Breer joined 98.5 The Sports Hub's Zolak & Bertrand on Thursday and explained that once Sanders wasn't selected in the first two rounds, his high profile made him a less desirable option as a backup QB.
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"When you get to the third round, now we're talking about, for some teams, players that are depth or they're developmental. And those players generally have to develop in the shadows," Breer said.
Sanders, the son of an NFL superstar and one of the biggest names in college football last season, isn't a "blend into the background" type of player. And according to Breer, he didn't act like it in the lead-up to the 2025 draft.
"He handled the process like he was a top-five (pick) lock," Breer said, adding that Sanders declined to meet with several teams with the assumption that he'd be taken early in the first round.
"All these teams that either heard the bad stories from the other teams or that (he) refused to meet with or that had a bad experience with (him) personally ... now the amount of teams that are willing to (draft him) has narrowed," Breer said of teams passing on Sanders in the later rounds.
What exactly are those "bad stories" about Sanders? Breer shared two examples he heard from NFL sources, including one that came during a meeting with a team that asked Sanders to install an offensive play to test his football knowledge.
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"They give players an install, and there are mistakes intentionally put in the install," Breer said, noting that this is a common practice among NFL teams. "He didn't catch them and got called on it, and it didn't go well after that. ... He was pissed that they did that to him."
The other example came during an NFL Combine meeting with a team that asked him to explain one of his interceptions.
"He throws a bad interception. It was a deep throw early in the game," Breer said. "They go in the meeting, they show the interception and they say, 'What happened here?' (Sanders responds,) 'Well, I like to get into a rhythm earlier in the game.'
"They get into it over that, and (Sanders') conclusion is, 'Well, maybe I'm not a fit for you.'"
"The person who told me that story was like, 'I've never heard that before.' It was in a combine interview when you're just going from team to team trying to put your best foot forward."
Sanders faces an uphill climb to win the QB job in Cleveland, which currently has five signal-callers on its roster in Deshaun Watson, Joe Flacco, Kenny Pickett, Gabriel and Sanders.
Check out more from Breer on Sanders in the video below: