Warren Moon reveals advice to Shedeur Sanders after draft slide, warns of 'cornerback' mindset at QB

After sliding down the 2025 NFL Draft board, Shedeur Sanders finally heard his name called in the fifth round. The Cleveland Browns selected the former Colorado star with the No. 144 overall pick, and he joins a suddenly crowded quarterback room.

Despite five quarterbacks in Cleveland, Sanders will still have the opportunity to compete for the starting job. That’s part of the advice Hall of Famer Warren Moon had for him and his mentality after the draft.

Moon pointed out the fact Joe Flacco and Dillon Gabriel are also with the Browns, as are Kenny Pickett and Deshaun Watson. But without a clear-cut starter in his eyes, Moon encouraged Sanders to now shift his focus away from the fall down the draft board and toward the opportunity at hand.

“I think I would tell him, you understand the things that you might’ve done wrong and did right throughout the pre-draft process,” Moon told Kay Adams on FanDuel’s Up and Adams ahead of the Kentucky Derby. “But now, you’re drafted, you’re in an organization. You’ve got a chance to go in there and make a name for yourself. It’s how you go about doing it. It’s how you attack it. There’s nobody there that’s solidified in that job at quarterback right now. Joe Flacco’s in his 40s. We don’t know what he has. The kid from Oregon, he’s a rookie. … None of those guys have done anything in this league so far. So I think the job is wide-open for Shedeur.

“All he has to do is go in there, put his head down to the grindstone and go after it and be the player that he’s been the last few stops he’s been at. It’s all in front of him. It’s just, the only thing that’s affecting him now is he’s not a first-round draft pick, so it’s the amount of bonus money he gets. Otherwise, he’s still on the football team and he has just as good a chance as anybody else on that team to make it.”

Warren Moon: ‘Quarterback’s a humble position’

Shedeur Sanders is hoping to follow in the footsteps of his father, Deion, who also has a gold jacket as one of the best cornerbacks of all-time. However, one of the concerns through the pre-draft process was the way Shedeur Sanders reportedly carried himself in interviews. Warren Moon pointed out the difference between playing cornerback and quarterback, noting the need to be “humble” at QB.

“As a dad, probably an all-time great at that position, there’s a whole different mindset when you play corner compared to playing quarterback,” Moon said. “You can’t act like a cornerback when you’re playing quarterback. Quarterback’s a humble position. You’ve got to be respectful, you’ve got to be a leader, you’re the face of the franchise. There’s so much more responsibility that comes along with it. That’s what he has to understand.”

After entering the draft as one of the top quarterback prospects, according to multiple evaluators, Sanders wound up becoming the sixth QB off the board. Moon encouraged the rookie to use that as “fuel” to prove people wrong – noting his coaches.

“That’s what I’d say, you use this as fuel,” Moon said. “This is good fuel for you to just go in there and show what people don’t think you can do. I don’t know who the first day starter’s going to be. A lot of it’s going to have to do with how all these guys do in the preseason because that’s what coaches look at. How do you play when the lights are on?

“There’s only three preseason games now, so you don’t have as much of an opportunity to get out there and show what you can do. You’ve got to make the most of it. If you only get five plays, you make those five plays really five good plays.”