Shedeur Sanders remains one of the most polarizing draft prospects. After his Combine media appearance, Sanders saw his draft stock stumble quite a bit, even as reports emerged that one Head Coach seemingly found the QB to be too “arrogant” and “brash.” Good thing the former Buffs QB has quite a few powerful voices in his court willing to defend him.
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Two such voices are former defensive tackle Warren Sapp and former tight end Shannon Sharpe. Sapp—who now serves as a coach on Deion Sanders’ Buffs coaching staff—called out the anonymous Coach and challenged the statement. The former NFL Defensive Player of the Year revealed he has “been working for the last 48 hours” to uncover the coach in question. “If I get his name, we gonna do a deep dive into his life,” he threatened on Thee Pregame Show.
Shannon Sharpe appeared to back Sapp’s mission on the latest episode of Nightcap. He told Chad Johnson the Combine is focused on the wrong things. And that, in his opinion, contributed toward the badmouthing of Sanders.
“[It] always happens… there’s gonna be somebody [that says], ‘I don’t like the way he [did this or that]’… that’s the whole job of the Combine… the Combine’s job isn’t to build you up. It’s to break you down… tell me what he can do, dammit, cause I gotta take somebody… what can they do? [You’re] telling me everything he can’t do.” – Shannon Sharpe
As hard as Sapp and others have worked to dismiss the claim, it has already helped inflict damage on Sanders’ draft stock. Fortunately for Sanders, he still has an opportunity to change this perception at the Big 12 Pro Day.
These days, the NFL Scouting Combine functions more as a paparazzi event than scouting environment. When only the biggest schools in college football were televised regularly, it was necessary to gather players from every team in one place. You couldn’t compare prospects from different conferences or divisions otherwise.
But in this era, you can find footage on essentially every NFL prospect. Scouts could tune in to an Eastern Washington broadcast to watch Cooper Kupp in 2016. Because of these technological advancements, a player’s film, in Chad Johnson’s mind, should trump everything else.
Chad Johnson thinks Combine “doesn’t really matter”
The public sentiment about the Combine seems to be changing these days. More and more top prospects have started to opt out of the Combine to focus on their school’s pro day—as Shedeur and Travis Hunter have done—which offers more control over workouts and a more comfortable environment, or because they’ve already proven themselves and don’t need to risk injury or a bad performance at the Combine. Chad Johnson also thinks the Combine has lost its relevance.
“What can you do when you turn on the film? That’s what I want to see if I was a scout, if I was a GM, if I was the owner. Let me see your film. I don’t care what you could do in shorts, because the game of football, at the highest level, isn’t played in shorts,” he said bluntly.
This directly applies to Sanders. Why should he throw to a receiver he has never played with at the Combine? He’s seen as a top 10 pick. Throwing at his Pro Day, to wideouts he has chemistry with, makes much more sense. That familiarity resembles NFL circumstances more than throwing at the Combine ever could.
Sanders made a smart, strategic decision to avoid Combine drills. He couldn’t, however, control an anonymous coach trying to push an incongruent narrative about his personality.
