Shedeur Sanders made his NFL debut on Thursday night and while it was only a small sample size, Sanders didn’t play like a 5th-round rookie and if his career takes off in Cleveland (which sounds ridiculous to say out loud) there will be teams, potentially including the Raiders, wishing they had not passed on him in the draft.
It’s no secret that the presence of Deion Sanders didn’t help Shedeur’s draft stock, and some considered it a red flag when Tom Brady, who has a personal and business relationship with the Sanders family, wasn’t interested in Shedeur.
Yes, the Raiders traded for Geno Smith in the offseason, but they wouldn’t have passed on Sanders if they thought he was going to a franchise quarterback at the NFL level.
Whether Brady wants to acknowledge it or not, he is tied to the Raiders’ quarterback decisions and for better or worse, he deserves credit or blame for the team’s decision on Shedeur.
ESPN‘s Skip Bayless isn’t known for well thought out opinions, but he made a valid argument last week on Brady and Sanders.
“I had Mel [Kiper] on my show ahead of the draft and Mel stood tall and strong for Shedeur… and Mel went off on draft night when he slid and failed to be taken by the entire National Football League, including Tom Brady’s team. What was it five times Tom Brady’s Raiders could have drafted him?” Bayless said after Thursday’s game.
“You can’t tell me Tom Brady didn’t say, ‘No, no, no’ to Shedeur. They didn’t like his attitude. They didn’t like his interviews, and I kept saying watch the freaking tape. You can just watch it on TV. As you saw again [on Friday], I was not at all surprised by tonight at Carolina.”
The good news for Brady and the Raiders is that they seem to have found a quarterback in the draft with some NFL upside.
If the career of former North Dakota State quarterback Cam Miller eventually takes off, Brady will deserve credit for being a big part of the process that brought Miller to Las Vegas
Last week, Sports Illustrated insider Albert Breer said Brady made at least one secretive trip to Las Vegas to discuss the team’s offseason quarterback options.
Brady was a part of the decision to not sign Sam Darnold and he was a part of the decision to wait on a quarterback until the sixth round of the draft.
“Even if [Brady] isn’t in there every day, and he’s very sensitive about that, and a story I heard [was] he helped with their quarterback evaluation because obviously, who wouldn’t want Tom [helping in a quarterback search]?” Breer said on the Rich Eisen Show on Wednesday.
“So he flew in incognito for a day to sit down with the front office and the coaches to go through quarterbacks and look at quarterbacks on tape, and left, and no one knew about it,” Breer continued. “My understanding is the reason why is because he knows if he shows up, he takes all the oxygen out of the room. He knows if he shows up… he doesn’t’ want the perception out there… that he’s lording over everything. But he certainly has an influence of the types of players they are bringing in.”
x: @raidersbeat
F***, Blah, blah, Shedeur, blah, blah, blah, Aaron Rodgers, blah, blah blah, Jerry Jones, blah, blah……
It’s a new season, I’m trying to clean the cobwebs out of my football brain from 2024, but freak’n media can’t let it go.
I mean if Sanders develops into a quality starting QB, that will definitely be a black mark against the organization, given Sanders being pretty openly into the idea of being a Raider, the Brady-Sanders family connections, etc. If he doesn’t become a quality starter, and Cam Miller does, that’s a huge win. We’ll just have to see how it plays out. Given the number of chances the Raiders had to draft the young man, even if the team wasn’t super high on him, when it gets late into Day 2, I feel like it’s absolutely worth taking a flyer on a guy with that production and pedigree.
I am kind of rooting for the young man. I don’t like his Dad, but falling to pick 144 definitely seemed a bit purposeful in terms of humbling the guy. I hope he proves everyone wrong.
This article makes more jumps to conclusions than [insert better analogy here than I can think of].
Let’s see, this is “Tom Brady’s Raiders” now and I guess he was the guy in charge of the draft picks?
Look, it’s early in the preseason and you’ve got to write about something to fill the void. But this is so heavily based on conjecture that it’s fairly meaningless. But hey, you got me to click and reply, so winning!
IF (can’t make it any bigger) Sanders just happens to be a “franchise ” QB, apparently as evidenced by a half decent showing in the softest preseason game hell ever play in, the Raiders might regret passing on him. We won’t mention the other 31 teams.
And now based on a drive against 3rd and 4th stringers, Miller is being anointed as the long term answer at QB for the Raiders
Oops. 3rd paragraph was supposed to be at the end. Poor phone editing on my part.
Skip who?