When Baker Mayfield arrived at the 2018 NFL Draft, his confidence was a selling point. He went first overall and was celebrated for being exactly who he was. Seven years later, Shedeur Sanders showed up to the 2025 NFL Draft with the same energy and fell to pick 144.
Aqib Talib, Super Bowl 50 champion and a five-time Pro Bowler, has a word for that discrepancy.
Aqib Talib Calls Out NFL’s Double Standard as Shedeur Sanders’ Draft Treatment Remains a Talking Point
The comparisons between Mayfield and Sanders are not perfect, and Talib is not pretending they are. Mayfield went No. 1 overall because teams believed in his arm and accuracy, and his college production backed them up.
Sanders arrived in 2025 with an FBS-high 74% completion rate in his final college season at Colorado, and had a legitimate claim to being one of the most accurate passers the sport had produced.
What followed in the pre-draft process was a leak of anonymous coach quotes calling him “entitled,” describing his formal interview as the “worst” they had ever attended, and raising character questions that no team was willing to publicly attach their name to.
The same process that described Mayfield’s brashness as fire and competitive edge framed Sanders’ confidence as a red flag. Talib watched it happen and said exactly what he thought.
“Is he [Sanders] not a leader?” Talib said on “The Arena.” “We see he’s a leader. He’s done won everywhere he’s been. Then you just drop him like that. I don’t know. I just don’t like it. I don’t like how he was treated. [They say] he’s too confident, he’s too cocky, but when Baker does it, they love it. When Shedeur does it, they don’t like it. He falls five rounds. It’s just bulls**t. It’s still bulls**t to me.”
The “five rounds” Talib references are not hyperbole. The consensus pre-draft projections had Sanders going somewhere in the first two rounds. He slid past every quarterback taken ahead of him, past six rounds of picks, and landed at 144th overall on a team that had drafted him fourth on their own internal depth chart behind veterans Joe Flacco and Kenny Pickett and fellow rookie Dillon Gabriel. He did not receive a single first-team rep throughout training camp.
According to PFSN’s NFL QB Impact Metric, Sanders posted an impact score of 56.90 in his rookie season, ranking fourth-worst among qualified quarterbacks. Those numbers reflect a player thrown into action nine games in, with the worst offensive line and a receiver room that combined for only 4 touchdowns all year.
They do not reflect what Talib is talking about, which is whether the penalty for being Sanders was proportionate to the actual football concerns.
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Talib made the conversation personal, describing what he would have done if his own son had gone through the same process.
“If it was my son, I probably [would have] make it worse for him, I ain’t going to lie to you, because I’d be saying all kinds of s**t and pulling all kinds of cards,” Talib said. ” I just like how he handled it. I like how Prime handled it, because I’d be super pissed off.”
“At this point, my son may be streaming with Shilo,” he continued. “We gonna get the money a whole different way. So I don’t know. I commend them for how they handled it, how they’re handling it, and just keep handling it that way, because it just wasn’t right in my opinion. None of it was right.”
Deion Sanders, who coached his son at both Jackson State and Colorado, has been measured in his public response throughout. Shilo Sanders, Shedeur’s older brother, has also remained unsigned after he was released by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers last year. The family has endured sustained public scrutiny at every stage.
For Shedeur, the 2026 season is the answer. The Browns rebuilt the offensive line, added genuine weapons at receiver, and now have a head coach in Todd Monken whose offense was designed to let a quarterback operate.
The Mayfield parallel is not lost on anyone paying attention. He was drafted first overall by Cleveland in 2018, given immediate first-team reps, and celebrated from day one. Sanders, on the other hand, had to fight his way from fourth on the depth chart just to get on the field. Whether the outcomes ultimately look the same is the only question left.
