Former NFL Star Delivers Eye-Opening Prediction for Browns QB Shedeur Sanders

It's been a couple of weeks now since the 2025 NFL Draft, and the football world is still reeling from some of the drama that unfolded across the three-day event. Shedeur Sanders has been in the spotlight since the draft due to his unprecedented slide, free-falling from a projected first-round pick all the way to Day 3, when the Cleveland Browns ended his plummet in Round 5 with the 144th-overall pick.

That move didn't come without controversy, either. The Browns had been linked to Sanders as early as pick two, which they ended up using to trade down with the Jacksonville Jaguars. Cleveland had several opportunities to end his slide, including with the 94th pick, which they instead used on a different quarterback, Dillon Gabriel out of Oregon.

There has been a ton of speculation around both why Sanders's draft stock cratered the way it did and why the Browns ended up selecting two different rookie quarterbacks. The common belief now is that Shedeur Sanders made all of the wrong decisions in the predraft process — including tanking his interview with the New York Giants and possibly other teams, too, and declining to perform at the combine — and that Cleveland liked his talent but didn't believe it was worth the baggage that would be coming with him. Then, when Sanders was still available in the fifth round, the Browns deemed that it was too good of an opportunity to pass up on, off-field concerns be damned, and traded up to grab him.

It's largely assumed that Sanders's bravado and cockiness turned off a lot of teams from drafting him, especially considering that his intangibles didn't peg him as a slam-dunk prospect, either. His experience with the draft was surely a humbling experience, though, and he now has the opportunity to prove a lot of people wrong.

NFL legend and former All-Pro linebacker Shawne Merriman believes that Sanders's slide is the best thing that could've happened for his career. On the Up & Adams Show with Kay Adams, he stated:

"He can't see it now, but him slipping to where he slipped to might've been the best thing that has ever happened to him, because when he ends up being a starter — and he is, he's going to be the starter at some point — the expectations now... the weight is off his shoulders... I feel like Shedeur Sanders is in a position now where he can't lose."

With his freefall from first-rounder to Day 3 prospect, Sanders went from a flawed, but talented prospect with major off-field red flags to a massive underdog with a chip on his shoulder playing with house money. That could make him infinitely more dangerous, which bodes well for his saving grace in the Cleveland Browns.