The wait for Shedeur Sanders finally ended on Day 3 of the 2025 NFL Draft. With a common consensus of being a first-round selection, falling to the fifth round was a major shock to everyone involved, especially when the Cleveland Browns picked him up with the 144th overall pick.
Now, Sanders enters a competitive quarterback room featuring veteran Joe Flacco and another rookie QB, Dillon Gabriel, who was taken 50 spots ahead of him. As Sanders makes his way to Cleveland, it must be a huge relief for the family, although his father, NFL legend Deion Sanders, may have some explaining to do after his past comments about the Browns.
Deion Sanders’ Cleveland Browns Criticism Comes to Light
Over the last few decades, the Cleveland Browns have struggled to find consistency at the quarterback position. As a result, they’ve often been seen as one of the NFL’s least desirable destinations for young signal-callers. Deion made that feeling clear nearly seven years ago when he called out the Browns’ situation in a blunt tweet.
An old Deion Sanders tweet from 2018 has gone viral after the Browns selected Shedeur Sanders in the fifth round of the 2025 NFL Draft. 🫣 pic.twitter.com/CVSkxjkzsw
— PFSN (@PFN365)
“I love what the @Browns have done this offseason but if im a young QB ain’t no way im going to Cleveland. I would pull a ELI MANNING If possible. #ThinkAboutthat #Truth,” Sanders wrote on March 14, 2018.
At the time, the Browns were trying to overhaul their organization, eventually using the No. 1 overall pick to draft Baker Mayfield. While Mayfield led the team to a playoff win during his tenure, his time in Cleveland was short-lived, and the team has since gone through several quarterbacks.
Now, Sanders’ son finds himself in the same organization Deion once warned against. However, the team looks a lot different today than it did back then. When Deion posted that tweet, John Dorsey was serving as the Browns’ general manager. In 2020, Dorsey was replaced by Andrew Berry, who still holds the GM role and also serves as the team’s executive vice president of football operations.
Interestingly enough, Shedeur Sanders met with Berry and Browns owner Jimmy Haslam III at his program’s Pro Day before the draft. There were even reports that Berry had big dreams of landing not just Sanders, but also Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter. At one point, it seemed almost guaranteed that Cleveland would walk away with at least one of them.
But the draft didn’t play out that way. The Browns traded back from the second overall pick and passed on Hunter, then waited until the fifth round to select Sanders. To make it even tougher, Sanders wasn’t even the first quarterback Cleveland picked, with Gabriel hearing his name called earlier.
Now, Shedeur Sanders heads into Cleveland with a chance to change the narrative — not just for himself, but maybe for the Browns too.
