Shedeur Sanders has dominated the draft conversation for the Pittsburgh Steelers ever since his pre-draft visit was first reported early last week. The consensus opinion early in the process was that he was the 1b to Cam Ward’s 1a, but as the draft draws closer, he seems to be falling down media big boards.
“I’m having a really hard time finding coaches or scouts who believe Sanders is a first-round talent,” Albert Breer wrote via SI.com this morning. “This, by the way, is separate from any issue anyone has with his personality. Those questions exist, but lots of teams have made exceptions in that department in the past to take on guys with special talents. The problem seems to be that too many folks don’t think Sanders has those types of gifts.”
The Steelers learned just a few years ago that the lack of a defining trait can lead to unspectacular play. Kenny Pickett wasn’t awful, but he didn’t do anything to elevate the team. I personally think Sanders is a much better prospect, but what is the one trait that he can lean on to be successful early in his career? He’s not overly athletic. He doesn’t have the strongest arm to put zip on intermediate passes.
“Now, it’s not like Sanders is devoid of ability. Even his critics will tell you that he’s accurate, smart and tough, and credit him for winning consistently at programs where it’s hard to do that. There’s production there that doesn’t happen if a kid can’t play,” Breer wrote.
Yesterday I looked at several of the top big boards available by media talent evaluators around the league and compiled those big board rankings into an average. Shedeur Sanders had an average placement of 29.8 on the big boards with a high of 14 and a low of 47. Not a single evaluator had him as a top 10 talent, for what it’s worth. And more than one had him outside of the first round.
Will this result in Sanders falling to the Steelers at No. 21? Would they even take him if he did? It’s impossible to say right now, but it certainly feels like he could fall more than it did just a few weeks ago.
Only a few teams truly need a quarterback, and two of them at the top of the draft seem to be leaning toward blue chip talent at other positions. The New Orleans Saints at No. 9 could stop the fall, but they could opt out of reaching for a quarterback that early with better value still available.
They could also surprise with taking Jaxson Dart as the second quarterback off the board. They have spent a lot of time with him this pre-draft process. According to Breer, some coaches view Dart as the better player.
“The coach I was talking to said, simply, that when you watch those two under duress on tape, you see Dart moving forward, and Sanders moving backward,” Breer wrote. “That essentially means that where Dart would climb the pocket, Sanders would bail out of the back of it, and run away from defenders to create time to throw.”
The Steelers have plenty of experience with quarterbacks who bail out of the pocket in recent years. In fact, that is pretty much exclusively what they’ve dealt with. Mitch Trubisky, Kenny Pickett, Russell Wilson and Justin Fields all had the bad habit of drifting or bailing out of the pocket rather than trying to step up and navigate it. It’s not a great trait to have and it creates a lot of unnecessary sacks.
Sanders took 94 sacks over his last two seasons at Colorado. Dart, for comparison, took 55 over that same span.
Throw in the media rumblings about Tyler Shough being viewed as the second-best QB prospect and the undeniable potential that Jalen Milroe brings, and I truly have no clue how the quarterback pecking order will shake out during the draft. If Sanders is a prospect the Steelers really like, it doesn’t seem far-fetched in the slightest that he would fall to No. 21.
