NFL tries to send message to Shedeur Sanders, father with draft slide, ex-NFL star says
Former NFL star Robert Griffin III offered his take on the Shedeur Sanders situation on Saturday as the former college star fell into the fifth round to the Cleveland Browns.
Sanders had questionable interviews with teams during the draft process, according to multiple reports. That appeared to hamper any notion of him being selected in the first round, let alone rounds two through four.
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Griffin said on his podcast, with his wife, Grete, that there was a bigger message being sent to the son of Pro Football Hall of Famer Deion Sanders.
"Shedeur Sanders should not have dropped out of the first three rounds of the NFL draft. He dropped out of the first three rounds of the NFL Draft because it’s 100% personal," Griffin said, via Awful Announcing. "NFL GMs, scouts, and the NFL at large are trying to teach Deion Sanders and Shedeur Sanders a lesson.
"A lesson that they didn’t teach the Mannings when Eli said he wasn’t going to play in San Diego, a lesson that they did not teach Andrew Luck and his family when he was the perennial No. 1 draft pick from the time he was a freshman in college, a lesson that they did not teach Baker Mayfield when he came out of Oklahoma, and a message that they did not teach Joe Burrow when he came out of LSU. So what do I mean by all of that? What I mean is that all of these guys had the confidence, many of them had the bravado that is similar to what Shedeur Sanders has. But none of them were punished in the way he’s been punished."
The Browns’ selection of Sanders was the second quarterback the team chose over the course of the draft. They picked Dillon Gabriel, out of Oregon, before they chose Sanders.
The former Colorado Buffaloes star took the high road when he spoke to reporters.
"Nothing really affected me the last couple of days," Sanders told reporters Saturday. "I'm favored, I'm blessed. Besides that, it's not really anything that changed. The love of the game is still the love of the game. When you get on the field, there wasn't too much negativity being said. I know I gotta clean up some things in my game for me to be at my best, but that's what I take each offseason one at a time and fix it.
"The main thing, I'm just proving — coach (Kevin) Stefanski and (general manager Andrew) Berry — that they are right. That's it. They're right about picking me. I'm a good decision. I'm a good draft pick for them, to be able to come in there and do what I need to do."
Fox News’ Jackson Thompson contributed to this report.
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