{"id":87826,"date":"2025-08-22T15:48:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T15:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/87826\/"},"modified":"2025-08-22T15:48:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T15:48:07","slug":"eric-dickerson-claims-nfl-teams-were-told-not-to-draft-shedeur-sanders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/87826\/","title":{"rendered":"Eric Dickerson claims NFL teams were told not to draft Shedeur Sanders"},"content":{"rendered":"

If that fan lawsuit<\/a> over the draft-day free-fall of Browns quarterback Shedeur Sanders ever goes anywhere, a Hall of Fame running back could be a star witness.<\/p>\n

Eric Dickerson recently claimed that teams were told to not draft Sanders.<\/p>\n

\u201cI tell you this much, what I heard from someone that\u2019s in the NFL, that the NFL told [teams] don\u2019t draft him, do not draft him<\/a>,\u201d Dickerson said on the Roggin and Rodney Show, via Christian Arnold of the New York Post. \u201cWe\u2019re going to make an example out of him. And this came from a very good source, a very good source.\u201d<\/p>\n

So was this a case of the Browns, who created a mess for the league by giving quarterback Deshaun Watson a fully-guaranteed contract, going rogue? Not as Dickerson tells it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI won\u2019t say who \u2014 somebody called the Cleveland Browns and said, \u2018Don\u2019t do that, draft him,\u2019\u201d Dickerson said. \u201cBecause they weren\u2019t going to draft him, either. . . .They were forced into drafting him, because somebody made a call to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dickerson explained that the original goal was to have Sanders not be drafted at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was not gonna get drafted, to basically show you this is what happens when you do this,\u201d Dickerson said. \u201cWhen I say it came from a good source, I say it came from a very, very good source.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is any of this plausible? At one level, no. At another level, maybe.<\/p>\n

Consider this. Sanders fell (we were told after the draft) because he viewed the pre-draft process as he was being recruited, not as he was being interviewed. He was essentially pushing back against the \u201chonor and a privilege\u201d nonsense. If his approach had been ratified by a high selection in the draft, others may have done the same.<\/p>\n

And the NFL does not want the cyborgs to become self-aware.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s not crazy. In the hidden (until it wasn\u2019t) collusion ruling, the arbitrator found that the NFL\u2019s Management Council, with the blessing of the Commissioner, encouraged teams as a result of the Watson contract to resist fully-guaranteed contracts. Would it be nuts to think that the league, which has made the draft into a massive offseason tentpole event by perpetuating the notion that it\u2019s a Harry Potter sorting-hat ceremony, will react negatively to any player who doesn\u2019t play along?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a job interview.\u201d We hear it every year. Players get poked and prodded and interrogated and scrutinized. For the system to work, the players need to submit. If they ever realize the power that comes from saying, \u201cIt\u2019s an honor and a privilege for you to be able to employ us,\u201d the whole thing could fall apart.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all about power. It\u2019s all about showing those who don\u2019t have the power that there are consequences to not yielding to the power.<\/p>\n

Colin Kaepernick learned that lesson. Shedeur Sanders, if Dickerson\u2019s source is accurate, learned that lesson, too. That lesson will be repeated until enough players do something to short-circuit the entire system.<\/p>\n

Which will never happen, if the NFL can help it.<\/p>\n

So, no, it\u2019s not crazy to think that someone put out the word to send a clear and unambiguous message to Shedeur Sanders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If that fan lawsuit over the draft-day free-fall of Browns quarterback Shedeur Sanders ever goes anywhere, a Hall…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,593,85],"class_list":["post-87826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}