MIAMI — Shedeur Sanders showed up to the “2Legendary” draft day party he was hosting in a white Bentley, but not the one he purchased/leased and was being driven around in during college, and had a diamond-encrusted dollar sign necklace the size of a paper plate around his neck.

The Colorado quarterback had a musical artist, dancehall’s Shenseea, on his arm, and accepted a briefcase full of $1 million dollars as a gift while his own personal camera crew documented his slide down the 2025 NFL draft.

Sanders, the son of legendary Hall of Fame football player turned college coach Deion Sanders, was living his best life on his worst day.

It was at that moment I realized the accomplished, but entitled draft prospect, who had never had to compete for his starting role because he had always been coached by his pops, was going to slide out the first round.

Throughout the years the NFL has shown that they will employ murderers, thieves, abusers and accused rapists.

If a football prospect can score touchdowns, or sack quarterbacks, helping your favorite football team win games, like Tyreek Hill can, the NFL will usually look the other way at his transgressions.

But the bar is higher, much higher, for quarterbacks.

Quarterbacks are the face of the franchise, and usually the tone-setter for the entire organization.

So the last thing most NFL teams want to do is hand the keys to an immature, entitled prima donna, and that’s exactly how Sanders’ behavior got him labeled in the draft process.

Shedeur’s father, Deion, entered the NFL with the same amount of bravado. But his talent was objectively transcendent. Sanders was a two-sport athlete who split his time between the NFL and Major League Baseball early in his career.

Given the draft slide, it sure sounds like NFL teams decided Shedeur’s temperament vastly outweighed his talent.

Shedeur “rubbed teams the wrong way” and left an unfavorable impression on several executives and coaches during the months leading up to the draft. Before the draft, reports surfaced about Shedeur being considered “entitled” and “arrogant” in private interviews.

He was allegedly unprepared for team meetings with teams.

His demeanor turned off one quarterback-needy team that met with him multiple times, according to a source.

The quarterback-less Pittsburgh Steelers, which is led by two minorities in general manager Omar Khan and coach Mike Tomlin, passed on Sanders three times, and selected quarterback Will Howard in the sixth round.

And keep in mind this is a franchise that employed former Dolphins coach Brian Flores when the rest of the NFL was blackballing him for suing the league. My point is the Steelers don’t scare easily, but were scared of Deion’s son.

Sanders was unprepared for an offensive install with Giants head coach Brian Daboll and when he was questioned he got into a heated exchange, according to draft analyst Todd McShay’s sources.

There is a report Sanders took a FaceTime call during a team meeting with coaches and executives for one team at the combine.

Put that with his father’s comments leading up to the draft, where he openly vowed to make sure Sanders didn’t just end up with just any franchise, flat-out saying he wouldn’t allow him to play for the very team that drafted his son (Cleveland Browns), and it’s understandable why Sanders slid to the fifth round.

The Dolphins, who needed a third quarterback to serve as the backup to Tua Tagovailoa and Zach Wilson, openly admitted they discussed selecting Sanders in the fifth round.

Clearly that discussion didn’t go in Sanders’ favor because Miami used pick No. 143 on Maryland defensive tackle Jordan Phillips, who was taken one pick before Sanders’ nightmarish draft experience came to an end with Cleveland trading up to select him at 144 in the fifth, two rounds after drafting Oregon’s Dillon Gabriel.

Sanders clearly didn’t fall into a fifth-round selection due to a lack of talent. You would struggle to find an evaluator who had Gabriel, or Tyler Shough (whom the New Orleans Saints took), rated higher than Sanders.

He slid in the draft because of how entitled he came across, treating NFL teams like they were recruiting him instead of interviewing him for their most important job opening.

Sanders did not give the predraft process the respect it deserved, and the NFL sent him, his father, and all the athletes coming up the collegiate pipelines with an artificially inflated ego because of their million-dollar NIL deals, a much needed message.

Playing in the NFL is a privilege, not a right, and players better start acting accordingly.

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