Deion Sanders praises son Shedeur for handling heavy sack count

Few quarterbacks have dealt with the kind of constant pressure Colorado gunslinger Shedeur Sanders has this season, but coach Deion Sanders believes the challenge for his son is only making him a better player.

For one, it exposes NFL scouts to what things will look like when Sanders faces an inordinate amount of pressure.

“Shedeur, I’ve seen him in every possible situation that he could possibly be in and I know how he’s affected,” Sanders said. “He’s hurting a little right now. He don’t even like needles, he don’t believe in them, but he had to get a shot. He had to get a shot to numb certain areas so he could play.”

Sanders has continued to soldier through, despite taking a whopping 45 sacks on the season. He’s taken more sacks himself than all but one team in the country has allowed in total.

But Deion Sanders continued to underscore the point that this could be a benefit in the long run.

“You’ve got to understand, when you go to the next level a great quarterback is going to be drafted really high,” Sanders pointed out. “They’re probably going to be in the top five picks. What kind of line do you think they’re going to be playing behind? What kind of team you think they’re going to be playing with? That’s right.”

Spoiler: Not every good ones.

You need someone that’s comfortable taking some time to build things up, much the way Colorado is in its attempted rebound from the depths of college football.

“You want somebody that can handle that,” Deion Sanders said. “If you’re drafting a guy and he can’t handle that emotionally, and not only that, the difference in pros and college is college don’t huddle. Pros do. So you’ve got a kid, 21 years old, looking in the eyes of a grown man with families and kids trying to win. And probably maybe on his last two or maybe several years, and he wants to win. And you’ve got a college kid not used to pressure sitting up there mumbling and stumbling over the plays, they’re going to say, ‘Hey man, get this kid out of here, we ain’t got time for that.’

“So you’ve got to think about all those attributes that those young men come with into the NFL.”

According to Sanders, you can already see some of this with last year’s NFL Draft classes. While some like CJ Stroud are having immense success, others are struggling.

“You’ve got some college quarterbacks that went into pro last year struggling and you’ve got some doing well,” Sanders said. “It’s because they couldn’t handle that heat, they couldn’t handle that pressure in those occasions and those times.”

After taking 45 sacks, Shedeur Sanders will certainly be hoping the payoff is increased reliability in stressful moments that NFL teams will see and appreciate.