Details from Shedeur Sanders' Pre-Draft Interviews Reportedly Revealed amid Rumors

Cleveland Browns rookie quarterback Shedeur Sanders faced criticisms for his pre-draft interviews, and new details have emerged about where he went wrong.

Sports Illustrated's Albert Breer detailed multiple instances in which Sanders failed to impress prospective teams. In one meeting at the NFL Scouting Combine, a team questioned him on an interception that he threw while he was at Colorado.

"When asked to explain it, Sanders didn’t take blame," Breer stated. "And as they dove deeper into it, and how it might relate to the NFL level, Sanders simply concluded that maybe he and the staff he was talking to might not be a match."

In another meeting, Sanders failed to identify the mistakes intentionally placed in an install that he was supposed to study beforehand. After he was called out on it, "the resulting exchange wasn’t pretty," per Breer.

While Sanders' lackluster pre-draft interviews were expected to slightly hurt his draft stock, no one expected him to fall all the way to the fifth round before the Browns mercifully drafted him. He was the sixth quarterback off the board, and he's the second rookie signal-caller heading to Cleveland after the team selected Oregon quarterback Dillon Gabriel in the third round.

Breer noted that Sanders' approach to the interviews indicated that he was "trying to steer himself away from certain places." While a top player like Eli Manning successfully got his wish of being sent to the New York Giants over two decades ago, Breer pointed out that Sanders "wasn’t considered the prospect he was built up to be by the people who matter—the ones who were doing the picking over the weekend."

In addition to the questions about his attitude, evaluators reportedly didn't view Sanders as a first-round talent because of multiple holes in his game.

"He’s not a great athlete," Breer stated. "He didn’t show great arm talent. He had bad habits in taking unnecessary sacks and bailing out of the back of the pocket. He had trouble playing on time in general and did things off-schedule that weren’t going to translate to the NFL."

Sanders will certainly be motivated to prove his doubters wrong as he begins his NFL career with the Browns.