It’s a prevalent notion around the college football verse that ESPN has it’s biases. Ever since they got broadcasting rights to the SEC, there’s been widespread discourse about their lopsided love for the conference relative to others. Senior figureheads like Paul Finebaum and Kirk Herbstreit have often made comments that fan the flames of this notion within the masses. To shake off these accusations about biases in CFB, has the network overcorrected? Shedeur Sanders has been subjected to some rather mean judgments stemming out of ESPN. This isn’t too unusual, except it’s weird that it’s happened twice within as many days!
Shedeur Sanders’ tryst with etching his name in the annals of college football is complete. He succeeded, for the most part. Shedeur, alongside his father, Deion Sanders, and teammate Travis Hunter, turned an entire program on its head. Colorado was an afterthought, vanquishing in the depths of whatever comes beneath mediocrity. The trifecta’s arrival and subsequent work in Boulder changed the entire perception around them. All the while, Shedeur put up some brilliant numbers and performances. However, his hand in resuscitating a program on life support and doing so in style doesn’t seem to have impressed ESPN’s Bill Connelly all that much.
Connelly took up a task that was bound to spawn controversy. He’s prepared a ranking of the top 90 CFB quarterbacks since the turn of the century. Lists like this always have a couple of eyebrow-raising placements. With this one, that came about with Shedeur Sanders. He was slated in at #84. Now, the glass-half-full perspective would be, “Hey, at least he made it.” Something his contemporary and Natty champ Will Howard can’t say. But the converse argument about Shedeur being slept on and disrespected gets some traction when you look at which of Shedeur’s contemporaries placed in front of him. Context is key. While Shedeur Sanders ranked 84th, Kurtis Rourke ranked 81st. Conceded, Rourke had a more extensive career in the FBS and is a stud in his own right. But let’s dissect his latest and arguably best season with Indiana.
Kurtis Rourke was absolutely sensational, carving up B1G defenses like turkey on Thanksgiving. Although it was in a much more functional offensive system under Curt Cignetti than Shedeur had. Mind you, Shedeur Sanders didn’t have any run game to speak of to complement him whatsoever. Other than that, he was at the top. Let’s recap it for you.
First in the nation in complete rate. 2nd in the number of touchdown passes. Ranked third in air yardage. And the all-important QB rating? Where did he rank? No. 5. All in all, the top 5 in four important categories. To put that into perspective, no other quarterback ranks in the top 10 of all four categories. All at a program that finished 1-11 before he stepped on campus. While Rourke also led a fairytale story of his own, IU wasn’t in as dire straits.
Other QBs in the most recent crop that got placements on Ben Connelly’s list had more airtight cases for being in front of Shedeur. Jaxson Dart ranked #60. Cam Ward ranked #53, and Dillon Gabriel ranked #24. While a couple of the snubbed names will feel more agitated, Shedeur Sanders can feel hard done by. He has the raw numbers as well as the impact. Only a small sample size works against him. Is Connelly’s ranking of Shedeur blasphemous? No, it’s somewhat rational. But couple this with Field Yates’ placement of him in his ranking of the 2025 draft class, and it becomes a slyly bad look on ESPN.
Shedeur Sanders hit with a double blow right outta ESPN HQ
When Roger Goodell’s actual NFL Draft rolls around in just over 3 weeks, Shedeur Sanders is potentially going to go as high as no. 2 overall. But that’s largely because he’s a quarterback, and they naturally get a bump because of the importance of the position. Field Yates offered an alternative hypothesis. A ranking of draft prospects based not on draft stock but on pure skill and ability. An order of how they’d get picked if certain position groups weren’t more valuable than others.
Travis Hunter came in ranked #1, Abdul Carter #2, and Mason Graham ranked 3rd. Shedeur Sanders’ closest adversary in the draft, Cam Ward, placed 6th. Not only did Shedeur come in behind Cam, but the gap is rather large. Yates has him down as the 16th-best player in this draft class. It’s not an indictment, but it’s not very good either. While Yates lauded Shedeur for his passing, saying he’s the best pocket passer in the entire class, he also said Shedeur “will need to clean up his pocket navigation…While he played behind a shaky offensive line at Colorado, he led the FBS with 42 sacks taken.” A fair statement, but calling that O-line shaky is an understatement.
Shedeur Sanders isn’t the perfect QB by any stretch of the imagination. He’s got blatant holes in his repertoire, most of which have got to do with his athleticism—or lack thereof. He doesn’t have a cannon for an arm, either. He’s a throwback, someone who does damage from the pocket and only sees fit to leave it once it collapses. Something that’s piqued the interest of a Super Bowl-contending franchise. With dynamic, dual-threat quarterbacks being the favored archetype in the NFL right now, it’s understandable why Yates isn’t a huge advocate of Shedeur. But #16th does seem a tad low. As for Connelly, that list’s nuances make it so that anything goes. Alas, these are mere hypotheticals. Shedeur’s tape and reputation speak for themselves, for better or for worse.
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