At the start of the 2024 NCAA football season, Colorado Buffaloes safety Shilo Sanders wasn’t considered a top prospect, and was viewed as a solid mid-round draft pick. However, injuries and a decline in performance have seen his draft stock plummet despite the team’s 9-4 season.
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Seen as a fifth-round pick in September last year, the consensus now is that Shilo is likely to go undrafted. He wasn’t even invited to the NFL Scouting Combine, despite a whopping 329 other players getting the nod. He’s no Shedeur, surely. However, we’re still talking about a son of Deion Sanders. Shilo is not going to let a snub shake his self-confidence.
Instead of whining, he is focused on what he can control: his performance at Colorado’s Pro Day. Shilo and his team will be able to control the variables there as he attempts to get his name back on draft boards with impressive numbers in drills like the 40-yard dash. And his father knows how important straight-line speed is.
Deion was seen giving his son some extra motivation to run at least a 4.4 in the 40-yard dash in the latest Sanders family vlog, Well Off Media. “This time I’m running a 4.4,” a fired-up Shilo said while lifting weights.
Deion, surprised, raised an eyebrow: “Let’s do it! You said 4.4?” And when Shilo doubled down, Deion made it interesting. “You run a 4.4, I’ll buy you a new car.”
The Colorado head coach said it so nonchalantly that it seemed Shilo didn’t hear it at first. But once he realized what his dad was offering, he quickly showed his confidence again. The star safety even thanked his father “in advance”, confident he’ll hit that number.
While Shilo is probably faster than his pocket passer brother, Shedeur, he can’t hold a candle to his father. Deion was one of the fastest players in NFL history. He ran an unofficial 4.27 at the 1989 NFL Scouting Combine. And he made sure his son remembered who his daddy was.
Deion said he didn’t even train before his blazing time and ate that sprint “for breakfast” that day. “I was playing baseball, I didn’t really have time to be going to the Combine. But they said I needed to go there just to be who I was. And I got frustrated with the process…” he said.
“I remember one time I was just chillin’, and we were on line because it was in alphabetical order… And I said, ‘Can we just go in draft order, let’s get this over with, man’,” added Deion.
If Shilo can run a 4.4 in the 40-yard dash, it would turn some heads. It might not put him back on the board, but it would certainly make teams consider him more seriously on Day 3 of the 2025 NFL Draft. That seems like the best-case scenario for the young DB at this point.
