On Sunday, we learned that the Baltimore Ravens were keen on drafting Shedeur Sanders in the fifth round, but the rookie QB kiboshed the idea. Sanders didn’t want to go to a team with an entrenched starter, and three picks later, the AFC North rival Cleveland Browns selected him instead.
You’ve got to love the fact that this occurrence, which happened back in April, conveniently leaked only this past weekend, on the same day that the two division rivals squared off.
Advertisement
Ravens head coach John Harbaugh was naturally asked about the Sanders situation by the media on Monday.
As you might expect, he refused to provide any real insight at all.
Thus, we can only speculate about how Shedeur Sanders might have fit in, had Baltimore actually drafted him.
Baltimore does not even have a third quarterback on their depth chart, so maybe selecting Sanders might not have made much sense.
Since the Ravens were forced to pass on Sanders at the 141st overall pick, they took Alabama A&M OT Carson Vinson instead. He’s currently the third RT on the Ravens depth chart.
Sanders actually had a perfect situation set up for him in Baltimore, as he could have:
Advertisement
1. adjusted to the NFL without the pressure of having to make an immediate impact and
2. learned directly from the QB with both the highest career passer rating and the most rushing yards, all-time.
But how much could Sanders have really contributed to this current team? It is tough to say, given how young this season is. However, it sounds like it would have been a better deal for the rookie out of Colorado than it would have been for John Harbaugh’s team.
Plus, you would have had all the media and social media distractions that come along with having one of Deion Sanders’ offspring on your roster. Some teams, like the New York Jets and Dallas Cowboys, for instance, seem to be more attuned to letting the media circus come to town.
Advertisement
There was a time when the Ravens were making a lot of news for all the wrong reasons, about 11 years ago, when the Ray Rice domestic violence video was going viral. Rice was the biggest villain in the NFL at the time, and the club cut ties with him as quickly as they could.
The Sanders and Rice situations are indeed apples and oranges, with the only common thread being that it’s a storyline overshadowing everything else. It’s probably better for the Ravens that they avoided this kind of thing, this time.
Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise that this didn’t work out.
This article originally appeared on Ravens Wire: Would Shedeur Sanders being Lamar Jackson’s understudy actually worked