A little over a year ago, when several major college stars refused to participate in any training part of the annual combination of annual scouting of the League, a general manager of AFC underlined the growing trend as a Arrival of the “opt-out” generation.
While I gathered a story on this subject, I spent days listening to the decision -makers inside the league, either to contextualize it. For many, it was an example of a new disturbing standard, where certain prospects for the recovery of the NFL have not seen the pre-trafic process as necessary to succeed in a transition to the league. For others, it was an example of players taking power in hand and refusing to participate in something that would probably only hurt them.
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“Each step has been eroded over time,” complained of a high -ranking framework of the AFC. “The guys withdraw secondary matches, college bowls, star matches, combinations, professional days. This is the new normal. The arrogance of all this. And it will only get worse.”
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An NFC leader was a little more diplomatic on this subject, suggesting: “Some are these guys who do not want to be overexposed.”
But inside everything, there was a common agreement. Regarding an elite talent like Marvin Harrison Jr., refusing to participate in the majority of the pre-project process had no importance. He did not have training sessions. He did not speak to the media. He did things as he wanted, and he has always been taken with the fourth choice in total in the draft. But also in this same common agreement: one day another player will do everything in his own way, and it will bite him.
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It was difficult not to think about these conversations while I was watching Colorado Quart-Arrière Sheder Sanders Choose the dashboard to the fifth round of this NFL project. It was a unprecedented that shocked even those who were deeply in the critical side of the big book Regarding the evaluation of Sanders.
Sheder Sanders did things in his own way during the talent assessment process of the NFL project. And it seems that the league has responded coldly to this approach. (AP photo / George Walker IV)
(Associated Press)
A former director general of the NFL – who watched Sanders during the seasons 2023 and 2024 – was a solid critic of him as a possible quarter to the cornerstone at the next level. And even he was left incredulous when Sheder fell from the third round.
“I am shocked that it is so bad,” said the former managing director. “I thought he was one (grade from second to the third round) in reality, but it seems personal.”
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I contacted this same former managing director on Saturday evening, Sheder having been selected 5 by the Browns of Cleveland. I asked him if he believed that autumn illustrated the need for star players to reconsider ramifications to navigate the pre-project process without the greatest seriousness and preparation.
“It was a fairly unique situation,” he said. “Many things combined to create this scenario. This is always the case by case and agent by agent, I would say.”
This is a very impartial and fair response. And even if I do not know the ins and outs of the way in which the Sanders project process went with each team, I would say this: when NFL Network has chosen to make known the visceral anonymous comments of a handful of league sources on their dissatisfaction with the approach of Sanders in meetings or what they considered as a “arrogance”, I was not shocked. I also heard extremely negative opinions on Sanders inside the teams. Some have dealt with his football assessment in the field. Others focused on the way he was doing. Still others were – and that cannot be ignored – rooted in Sanders' football career having been guided at each stage by his father, Deion Sanders.
For those looking for A Something that culminated in the fall of the draft of SheDer, there will be a disappointment because I think it was a different cocktail for each franchise and perhaps even for each assessor who was responsible for building a file on SheDer. You can find some who thought that his decision to completely check the combine was a huge error born from him without understanding how his assessments really realized. Others highlight his interviews, his preparation to face the curve balls when they meet teams, or have never played for a head coach at a high football level who was not his father. Not having an agent to prepare it at the start of the process or then trying to stop falling at the end of this could have been expensive. Some have simply pointed out the football assessments which, according to them, lacked.
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In the end: the League teams found reasons to transmit it, or have never been convinced by Sanders in the pre-trafic process on the reasons why they should take it. In reality, this happens every year with certain players. This time, it happened with an extremely publicized player who also had a good successful success.
Some assessors who spoke to Yahoo Sports on Saturday evening expressed an element of a common theme: the pre-project process is important a lot When you are an imperfect perspective or you already have a deep base of criticism. The doubt can be swollen when one of the steps is escaped or saved. You can be removed from project tables. You can undergo a slide. And you can become the main model of a message that teams are desperately trying to get prospects every year: you can do it in your own way rather than on their way, but it could cost you.
In the case of Sheder Sanders? For a variety of reasons that are clearly personal for the teams that have transmitted it, this has done so.
