Heading into the 2025 NFL Draft, Shedeur Sanders was widely considered one of the top quarterbacks. And why not? Coach Prime’s kid was gearing up to enter the pros after having a 74% passer rating for 4,134 yards and 37 touchdowns. But let’s be real—not all analysts were sold. Early on, ESPN’s Mel Kiper Jr. declared Sanders a “guaranteed high first-round pick” after his impressive performances. However, as draft day approached, the narrative started to shift.

NFL insider Albert Breer wasn’t sugarcoating this. He straight-up admitted, “He’s not a great athlete. He doesn’t have a big arm. Five years from now, are you going to be comfortable giving him $55-60-65 million a year? I think that’s the question.” And here we are. Once, Shedeur was expected to be one of the top 10 picks with almost every QB-needy team eyeing to draft him.

Take the Giants or the Raiders, for example—they both brought in veteran quarterbacks, but they were still projected to pick him. Then there were the Steelers, who didn’t even have a top-tier QB on their roster. But when it came time to pick Sanders, all of them passed. And just like that, the Colorado QB slipped all the way to the fifth round, landing at pick 144 with the Browns.

And no one knows this feeling better than Tom Brady. Picked by the Patriots with the 199th overall in the 2000 NFL draft, he surely knows a thing or two about the analyst predicting draft prospects ahead of the NFL draft. Now that the 2025 NFL draft is done and dusted, Brady shared an important piece of advice for the draft prospects. Brady believes that it’s not how athletic or talented a player looks on paper that makes a player successful.

Oh no. In fact, the NFL GOAT has just one mantra. It’s their character—things like determination, resilience, humility, intelligence—the “unseen” qualities that make a player successful in the pros. But Brady clarified one thing—just don’t tell all this to the NFL pundits. Why?

Because “They already know what’s going to happen. They’ve crunched the Combine data and measured the immeasurables. Their deep dives and draft grades are already flying around the internet, anointing some teams’ draft classes, condemning others, certain who the blue chippers are and convinced who the busts will be,” Brady wrote in his latest post on his official website titled, “How to build an NFL team?”

Brady believes that folks out there always act like they already know who the good players are and who the bad players will be. Think of it like Rotten Tomatoes compiling early reviews to give you an idea of how good or bad the movie is as per the critics. Except in this case, we’re talking about the draft prospects who are expecting to hear their name on the draft day. The NFL pundits use all kinds of statistics, data, and complicated analysis to grade draft classes.

Some declare a team’s draft amazing, while condemning others as failures—before the players even hit the field! But does that turn out to be true? Absolutely not. Not always. When the Cowboys drafted Dak Prescott in the fourth round, 135th overall pick, NFL.com draft analyst Lance Zierlein stated, “I wasn’t convinced [Dak Prescott] could make the intermediate throws. I wasn’t convinced he could make NFL throws.”

Fast forward to a year and Zielrein had a change of mind when he confessed that “Now this was a big miss for me, it looks like. I thought he was going to have problems with poise in the pocket…Now, you watch him with the Dallas Cowboys, and I’m taking the ‘L’ on that one because poise is one of the top traits I see in him.”

Sure, Shedeur Sanders slipped to the fifth round in this year’s draft, but that doesn’t mean he won’t perform for the Browns. Just remember, Tom Brady was picked 199th overall. And a lot of people thought he wasn’t cut out for the NFL—and well, we know what happened there.

But Tom Brady passed on Shedeur Sanders as well

The Raiders entered the 2025 NFL season with tons of questions about their QB room. Sure, they traded for Geno Smith and later signed a contract extension with him. But the search for a long-term signal caller? Yeah, it was still there. So, when the early mock drafts predicted Shedeur Sanders to be one of the top 2 QB prospects, Tom Brady’s Raiders were one of the top contenders to draft him.

But nah, the Las Vegas team passed on him again and again. Just like any other team. That sounds a bit odd, considering Brady and Sanders trained together back in 2020. And if we’re not wrong, then Brady just sent a simple message over Colorado’s upset win of TCU, writing, “Don’t be satisfied.” Yet, rounds after rounds, Brady and Co. pass on him like it was nothing.

Right after that went down, Skip Bayless took to his official ‘X’ handle and posted, “It is now pretty clear Tom Brady – who mentored Shedeur – told the Raiders NOT to take Shedeur. Duly noted. How could Tom Brady’s team pass on Shedeur again and again and again??? Brady reportedly coached Shedeur. Brady reportedly was involved in Raiders draft decision-making.” 

Well, we may never know what exactly went down. But one thing’s for sure. Raiders ditching Shedeur certainly got people talking. With the Browns finally selecting him at 144th… we just need to wait how his rookie season will turn out in Cleveland.