Light shed on rise, fall of Hogs' NFL draft prospects, Colorado's Sanders

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — United Athlete Sports co-founder and NFL agent Chris Turnage has a solid idea as to why SEC leading receiver Andrew Armstrong and Colorado quarterback Shadeur Sanders fell where they did in the NFL Draft and how Arkansas receiver Isaac TeSlaa managed to surprise everyone in the third round.

While talking to "Out of Bounds," an afternoon show on 103.7 The Buzz in Little Rock Wednesday afternoon, Turnage painted a behind the scenes picture for each that included discussions and observations with NFL general managers that made it easy to see how each decision came down.

TeSlaa jumps to the third round

Seeing TeSlaa pop up in the third round as the first Razorback taken in the draft was a bit of a surprise for the veteran agent, but the team that took him, the Detriot Lions, came as no surprise at all. Once Turnage saw which team it was, the jump up to third round status made sense.

"I think [Detriot] was the only team that had him that high," Turnage said. "Kind of cool for him get to go to his favorite team, his hometown team. But I was, I was, yeah, very, very surprised that every team, every single team I talked to, had him, you know, kind of targeted, late fourth, early fifth round. So I think the Lions were the only ones who had him there, but good for him. That's his hometown team, and a great spot."

However, it wasn't because TeSlaa grew up about two hours away from the Lions' organization that brought him up in the draft. According to Turnage, it's all about the recurring draft philosophy held by the current regime in Detroit.

"I think the Lions were the only team that had him that high," Turnage said of Detroit ignoring other draft boards. "And you know, the Lions, they're a great organization. I love dealing with them. And I guess this is good or bad, like, when they like a guy, they just, I don't feel like they have a great sense of where everybody else likes them."

It's not the first time he's seen Detriot not care how everyone else evaluated a player. The Lions deciding to take players where they value them rather than risk losing them later based on evaluations by draft experts and executives around the league is a trend.

"Last year they made a pick where they drafted a defensive tackle in the second, and literally every other team had him in, like, the fourth, fifth, but is this a guy they wanted and they liked," Turnage said. "And so, you know, like it or not, good or bad, if they like a guy, they're just going to go make sure they get him."

Armstrong never had a chance to be drafted

And while TeSlaa's rise may have caught Turnage a little off guard, the fall of his fellow Razorbacks receiver completely out of the draft despite leading the SEC in receiving did not. Turnage had been warned well in advance that NFL teams were going to steer clear of Armstrong.

"I thought he might get grabbed very late, [but] I wasn't surprised," Turnage said. "I thought it was 50/50, to be honest."

The reason he gave for the fall from draftable status not only caught the hosts off guard, but anyone who has listened to Armstrong interview or watched him in practice over the past two seasons.

"This is not meant to, you know, bash the kids by any means," Turnage said. "This is just kind of talking facts of what I know. A lot of teams have character concerns on him. Character question marks, character red flags."

Turnage said it was these red flags that prevented Armstrong from getting invites to the Senior Bowl and the East-West Shrine game. When pressed by the hosts because they hadn't heard of any character issues, it became clear this may go back a bit and also behind the scenes as of late.

"This was like at the start of football season last year when I was trying to decide whether to recruit him or not," Turnage said. "I had several teams tell me don't go after him. He's going to be undrafted because of some character concerns, because of some of the off the field issues. One team told me after the combine, or maybe was right before the combine, and maybe some interviews they had done, but he said it was, he marked it down as his worst interview of the entire season that he had.

"So I don't want to get in too many specifics of what they said, but that was a general consensus amongst a lot of teams. And you know, some of it had to deal with maybe some maturity and some other things."

It was to a point that Turnage said Miami may have been one of the few teams willing to take Armstrong on at all.

"They obviously don't mind, don't mind, you know, receivers that have some kind of issues, right?" Turnage said. "And so go to Miami and see what happens. I think he's a good player. I think he's gonna have a chance to carve out an opportunity as an undrafted guy down there, but I think that was largely the, you know, largely the issue."

Sanders did more than enough to sink own ship

Another player whose fall Turnage suspected before the draft was Sanders. While the hype machine had many, including the Colorado quarterback, confident he would be an early first round pick, around the league there was little doubt he was about to drop like a rock.

"A lot of teams going into [the draft] are telling me he was nowhere close to a first round pick," Turnage said. "He would have been seventh in last year's quarterback class if he would have been in that."

The overall range of skills and knowledge Sanders showed on the field already hampered him, but, as was noted numerous times publicly throughout the draft, interviews drove him completely off some teams' boards that had at least mild interest beforehand.

"One of the GMs that I talked to at the combine, they had interviewed Shedeur," Turnage said. "This team was picking somewhere, you know, between eight and 14, in that range. And there, basically [Sanders] told them, like, 'There's really no point to talk to you guys, because, I mean, unless y'all trade up, you're not going to have a chance at me.' And so obviously, comments like that turn, turn a lot of teams off."

In addition to a bit of a snotty attitude in interviews and reports that have also widely included keeping headphones around his neck with music blasting the entire time and an inability to understand anything beyond a spread set on the white board, Sanders blatantly ignored NFL rules of conduct during the combine.

"I think I might have mentioned this to you guys at one point, but when I was at the combine, we were sitting at a restaurant at like, 11 o'clock at night, and they have a lot of windows for the street, and the kids are supposed to be, you know, in their rooms," Turnage said. "There's nobody that does a quote, unquote dorm check or anything like that, but they're supposed to be [in their rooms]. Shedeur's out there with his camera crew filming and doing stuff for social media and and obviously, if I see it, you know, other team personnel is going to see that. So, I think that that really turned a lot of people off."

And then, of course, there was the dad factor. A lot of teams, especially those who only saw Sanders as a back-up, didn't want the hassle that was going to come with such a high profile, hands-on father.

"I don't know if you guys saw the quote where [Deion Sanders] said he wants to come sit down with Cleveland to see about the plan for them, and that ... [Shedeur doesn't] take a back seat to no quarterback," Turnage said. "You know, if I'm the Browns, I say we're not talking any fifth round pick's parents. We're not talking to Dillon Gabriel's parents in the third round ... If I'm the Cleveland Browns, I shut that down, but that was a real concern ... I mean, you're talking a lot of fifth round quarterbacks are practice squad guys."