ESPN roasted for cutting to Shedeur Sanders' empty couch during first round of 2025 NFL Draft

ESPN drew some criticism online for continuously cutting to footage of 2025 NFL Draft prospect Shedeur Sanders‘ couch inside his personalized draft room on Thursday. While it’s normal for the draft broadcast to showcase some of the talent who are not present at the annual event, the issue was Sanders was not present on the couch during any of the cuts.

Ranging from roasts to social media users making memes from the on-air mishaps, the hilarious responses are wide-ranging. Here are some of the best.

ESPN director: “Let’s show Shedeur Sanders’ couch before we go to commercial!” pic.twitter.com/yWglqP5Gmh

— Farzin Vousoughian (@Farzin21) April 25, 2025

Constantly cutting to an empty couch to check in on Shedeur Sanders has me 💀 every time lol

— MCJonV (@MCJonV) April 25, 2025

Holy cow! Shedeur Sanders looks like a couch! Who the hell would draft a couch at qb? #NFLDraft2025 pic.twitter.com/0h2IuSCImK

— John O'Grady (@OGOGrady) April 25, 2025

What if we kissed on the Shedeur Sanders draft couch pic.twitter.com/wtqu75N6SD

— Billy “DC” Buckets (LTD) (@BillyBuckets55) April 25, 2025

The couch seen in the second social media post is a part of Shedeur Sanders’ personalized draft room in Texas. It appears that ESPN believed Sanders would be sitting there for the majority of the night watching the draft. However, that does not appear to be the case.

The room features a large shelf with each NFL team’s hat on it with his logo plastered atop the shelf. It appears that he’ll be sitting inside a makeshift room surrounded by his own ‘legendary’ tag theme, which surrounds a couch and a pair of microphones waiting to be picked up on the table in front of it. More couches adorn the room — all facing a pair of wide-screen projectors displaying the feed of the 2025 NFL Draft, waiting for Sanders’ name to be called.

Wherever Sanders is waiting, he’s certainly hoping to hear his name called before the end of Thursday night. Some analysts had him going as high as top-five overall, with others projecting him to slide down the first round.

He’s proved his worth on tape. As a senior in 2024, Sanders threw for a career-best 4,134 yards on an impressive 74% completion percentage to go along with 37 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. Spending the last two seasons playing for the Buffaloes, he scored 72 total touchdowns.

Sanders averaged a 69.95% completion percentage during his career. All told, Sanders passed for 14,318 yards and 134 touchdowns. His 10 interceptions in 2024 were a career-high, so he isn’t known for turning the ball over through the air.

Before Colorado, Sanders played two seasons for Jackson State, where he threw for an impressive 70 touchdowns compared to 14 interceptions. All four seasons of his college career were played under his head coach and father, NFL Hall of Famer Deion Sanders. Now, he’s following in his father’s footsteps as he enters this new chapter in his football career.