Joel Klatt reacts to Shedeur Sanders fall in 2025 NFL Draft, why teams passed on him

Shedeur Sanders’ shocking slide in the 2025 NFL Draft was the story of the weekend in Green Bay. FOX’s Joel Klatt tried to make sense of it as the dust settled on the situation as a whole.

While Klatt thinks the world of Sanders, the fellow former Colorado quarterback can see how his unexpected slide came to fruition. When it comes down to it, it’s going to be up to Sanders to change the narrative surrounding him at the moment, as he hopes to build a career with the Cleveland Browns in the NFL.

“What really happened to Shedeur Sanders is that the league viewed him as a backup in this draft,” Klatt stated, via The Joel Klatt Show. “Once you’re viewed as a backup, there’s an entirely different angle that the teams are going to view and evaluate you with. This is, I think, the most important piece. If your talent is just going to overtake some of the things that they might not like about a personality, a meeting, whatever it is — your talent is going to overtake that. But if your film doesn’t overtake that, then as a backup, they’re going to look into more of the intangibles. That’s more part of the equation than maybe even the play.

“So, the way that you’re going to be ranked against the other players that also they would say are more backup quality, what they’re going to say is like, ‘Well, can he be a backup? What is he like as a teammate? What was he like in our meetings? Is he going to be fine in the locker room?’ That’s a bigger part of the equation. Why is that? I think that that’s pretty self-explanatory, because the last thing any organization wants is for the story to be in the backup quarterbacks locker.

“… The problem is, is this is not an internal story. This is an external story. This is the same thing that happens with any of the quarterbacks that we’ve talked about for years, whether it’s Tim Tebow or Colin Kaepernick or any of these guys. What ultimately happens is that franchises say, ‘We don’t want the story being in the backup quarterbacks’ locker.’ What ends up happening is that the story is driven by the outside, not the inside. It’s the media bringing that question to the locker room. It’s the media bringing that camera and that microphone to the locker room. Then, that becomes a distraction, because everybody has to answer those questions.

“There’s no amount of organizational strength or coaching strength or leadership strength within the locker room that can prevent that story from entering the locker room, because the media is the one bringing it. That’s not Tim’s fault or Colin’s fault or Shedeur’s fault, and maybe you can disagree with me on any of that. But that’s what the discussion is within these NFL decision makers. You can like it, you can love it, you can hate it, you can disagree with that. But I firmly believe that that’s what went on.”

Continuing, Klatt doesn’t believe the potential media distraction is the only reason Sanders fell either. He’s heard the rumbling about the former Buffaloes star being unprepared for pre-draft meetings, and simply overrating himself throughout the process a a whole.

“I see these other quarterbacks going to teams that are not drafting for a starting quarterback. I’m immediately thinking to myself, ‘Okay, this is 100% about the person.’ It’s easy to make this feel personal, because it is personal. They didn’t like the meetings with Shedeur Sanders, period,” Klatt added. “I started hearing some of the same things that anonymous sources were throwing out there. I know that I got very frustrated with anonymous sources, and still do. But I was hearing some of the same things about, you know, stories of some of these meetings. How he came unprepared and so on and so forth. That turned some teams off.

“So at that point, once your film is not good enough, then that’s going to matter more. That’s 100% what happened, to me. Here’s the other part, at no point during the process, did Shedeur do anything to quiet any of that. He was clearly unconcerned and he clearly overestimated what his film was and where he was going to go. Because everything that went on almost perpetuated, I think, what some of the NFL concerns were. More concerned with his brand. Thought he was bigger than the team or the franchise. More concerned with off-the-field stuff than on-the-field stuff.”

Shedeur Sanders can’t take back the way he went through the pre-draft process, but he can try to change his future after getting his shot with the Cleveland Browns. He’ll have to work harder than ever, and there will be a ton of eyes on him, but don’t count him out yet. This could all be a motivational story one day, or a tale of caution.