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Mel Kiper doubles down on Shedeur Sanders, calls further draft slide for QB ‘nonsensical’
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Mel Kiper has been around the NFL Draft for decades, and he’s seen many players inexplicably slide up the board and many players inexplicably slide back, for whatever reasons.
Fast-forward to Thursday night and the 2025 draft in Green Bay, and the curious case of former Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders, the highly publicized son of Buffaloes head coach Deion Sanders. Many believed Shedeur Sanders would be one of the top quarterbacks taken on Day 1, and maybe even one of the top players overall on Thursday night.
Instead, one of those hard-to-explain draft things happened and Sanders was not taken all night Thursday, sliding all the way down and out of the first round. Kiper was all over it all night long, to an insane degree. Some even thought it was way over the top, that Kiper’s infatuation with Sanders was a little too much to handle.
Fast-forward to Friday and the leadup to Rounds 2 and 3 of the draft, when Sanders will once again be on the board waiting to see where he’ll go. Kiper maintained in the leadup to the start of Round 2 that he’s not going to talk about Sanders all night — like he did on Thursday night — but there he was kind of still talking about Sanders anyway.
“If the (New Orleans) Saints don’t take Shedeur Sanders, that, to me, is one of the biggest blunders in the NFL Draft in a long time,” said Kiper about the Saints, who held the 8th pick of the second round.
Kiper continued to talk about the guy he claimed he wouldn’t talk about.
“The guy I’m going to be watching all night is obviously Shedeur. I’m not gonna talk about it all night, I’m going to talk about it now. We have had sliding QBs who have done really well… If he gets into the third round — it’s nonsensical right now — that’s ridiculous,” said Kiper.
And with that, Round 2 was underway and the Sanders’ saga resumed, with Kiper and millions of others waiting to hear the QB’s name finally called.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
