{"id":12312,"date":"2025-04-30T11:11:10","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T11:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/12312\/"},"modified":"2025-04-30T11:11:10","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T11:11:10","slug":"shedeur-sanders-draft-collusion-theory-is-nonsense-nfl-agent-leigh-steinberg-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/12312\/","title":{"rendered":"Shedeur Sanders Draft Collusion Theory Is ‘Nonsense,’ NFL Agent Leigh Steinberg Says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shedeur Sanders
\n Draft Collusion Theory ‘Nonsense’
\n … Leigh Steinberg Says<\/p>\n

\n Published April 30, 2025 12:30 AM PDT\n <\/p>\n

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TMZSports.com<\/p>\n

Pack up the tin foil hats and UFO paraphernalia … NFL agent Leigh Steinberg<\/a> tells TMZ Sports the conspiracy theory that owners blackballed Shedeur Sanders<\/a> during last weekend’s draft is “nonsense.”<\/p>\n

The former Univ. of Colorado signal-caller, of course, was largely expected to be a first-round pick … but tumbled all the way to the fifth round on Saturday — which had people racing to social media to accuse franchises of colluding with one another to keep Deion<\/a>‘s son down.<\/p>\n

Steinberg, though, told us this week there’s just no way that actually happened.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“Because teams want to add to their roster players that give them a chance to win,” he explained. “And that desire to have the best players overruns any other conspiracy theory. Teams would draft a player who’s got great talent on the field — he just didn’t find a match in the process.”<\/p>\n

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\"leigh<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Instead, Steinberg — Patrick Mahomes<\/a>‘ agent — said if people want to point the finger somewhere … they should start with Shedeur’s pre-draft process.<\/p>\n

Steinberg told us he believes not throwing at the combine — plus not preparing sufficiently for interviews with general managers — were big reasons for his slide.<\/p>\n

He also said the QB’s 13-12 record with the Buffaloes — and his famous father’s large shadow — likely played a role as well.<\/p>\n

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\"leigh-steinberg-shadeur-high-expectations-kal-04-29-2025\"<\/p>\n

TMZSports.com<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Steinberg told us it could all be “a really good thing” for the young Sanders’ career — pointing out there’s now no pressure for the 23-year-old to start right away.<\/p>\n

“He can still be a dominant player,” Steinberg said, “it’s just a slower path.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shedeur Sanders Draft Collusion Theory ‘Nonsense’ … Leigh Steinberg Says Published April 30, 2025 12:30 AM PDT Play…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,88,6,9,266,4429],"class_list":{"0":"post-12312","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-sports-news","13":"tag-tmz-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114426615218338817","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}