Joel Klatt strongly defends Shedeur Sanders against 'trash' narrative amid 2025 NFL Draft plummet

Shedeur Sanders is still on the board after day one of the 2025 NFL Draft. Sanders was long expected to be one of the first quarterbacks taken during Thursday’s first round. However, this would not end up being the case.

Fox Sports’ Joel Klatt, a fellow Colorado alum and Buffaloes QB1 pushed back against the narrative that Sanders isn’t NFL-ready. He saw first-hand what Sanders is capable of during his college career, and expects similar success to follow him to the pros despite his first-round fall.

“Shedeur represents everything that I dislike about the NFL Draft and it’s only one thing — and it’s narratives,” Klatt said. “And it’s narratives built up that are lazy and quite frankly, trash. When you come out as an anonymous source about some meeting that you had — you don’t think that some kid measured up to what you wanted him to be when he walked in your room — I think that that’s trash. Shedeur Sanders is gonna be a good quarterback in the National Football League.

“And I think that he’s gonna go and make some head coach and some fanbase very happy,” he continued. “‘Cause he’s already done that in his career in what I think is a very difficult spotlight, for his dad at the University of Colorado and a program that was nothing before he got there for two decades. So those are the things that I’m looking at — the things that you can’t measure.”

During the pre-draft process, Klatt argued that fit is better than a draft position for a quarterback. Klatt explained that putting Sanders in a position right out of the gates where his team’s success is based on him. Instead, he believes in putting Sanders in the right front office and letting him develop for some time.

Of course, having the last name he does means that fans expect him to be in the spotlight. After all, Sanders has never been one to shy away from the spotlight. However, playing behind an established quarterback for a year or two could go a long way in his NFL development.

“And everyone wants to have an opinion on this guy and listen, I get it,” Klatt continued. “Yeah, he holds the ball too long and he drifts and all of those things. But I’ll tell you what. This narrative that built up about Shedeur over this process, that’s what I dislike about this draft.”