Van Pelt said on his SVPod<\/a>. \u201cBecause the fact that he slid to a third day pick was this, why did it happen? Is it this? Is it that? Is it the other thing? Then, it was like, \u2018He\u2019s being set up to fail.\u2019 Then he plays, and it\u2019s, \u2018Oh, the NFL looks stupid for not drafting this guy.\u2019 It\u2019s like, my God.<\/p>\n\u201cPreseason football is meant to do one of four things. If you think a guy\u2019s good and he plays well, \u2018See!\u2019 If you think a guy\u2019s good and he plays bad, \u2018Well, it\u2019s just the preseason and it doesn\u2019t matter.\u2019 If you think a guy\u2019s bad and he plays well, \u2018Well, it\u2019s just the preseason and it doesn\u2019t matter.\u2019 And if you think a guy\u2019s bad and he plays bad, \u2018See!\u2019 And that\u2019s all anyone did here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\ufeff<\/p>\n
Van Pelt conceded that Sanders \u201cmade some nice throws\u201d and handled the moment better than his colleagues handled covering it. But, he also lamented the media\u2019s quick pivot from the \u201cset up to fail\u201d narrative to the idea that the \u201cNFL failed\u201d by not drafting him earlier.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe handled it better than we did, I think,\u201d SVP said of his colleagues in the media. \u201cBut it\u2019s just so wild to watch people stumble all over themselves to turn the fact that he was being set up to fail into the fact that the NFL failed because they didn\u2019t draft him. It was Week 1 of preseason, man. We\u2019re pretty reasonable about how we digest most of this, not that.\u201d<\/p>\n
There wasn\u2019t a single other preseason game viewed through the lens that a player\u2019s performance should immediately crown them the starter. Maybe you could make an argument for Tanner McKee, who completed 20 of 25 passes for 252 yards and two touchdowns, but even then, the conversation was more about whether he belonged as a starter in this league, not about taking a starting job away from the Philadelphia Eagles.<\/p>\n
Van Pelt tried \u2014 and succeeded \u2014 in not naming names, but he found it tough to justify the over-the-top reactions coming from both sides of the Shedeur Sanders debate.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a lens on that, that wasn\u2019t on any other game that\u2019s going to turn that performance into the reason he should be the starter,\u201d Van Pelt added. \u201cAnd you\u2019ve got people\u2026 I\u2019m trying not to mention specific people. I just, it\u2019s preseason football, man.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scott Van Pelt has a substantial ask from his colleagues in sports media. The Monday Night Countdown host…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2075],"tags":[235,260,2567,54,7,6,236,36384,17,54360],"class_list":{"0":"post-283537","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-carolina-panthers","8":"tag-carolina","9":"tag-carolina-panthers","10":"tag-carolinapanthers","11":"tag-cleveland-browns","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-nfl","14":"tag-panthers","15":"tag-scott-van-pelt","16":"tag-shedeur-sanders","17":"tag-svpod"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115018743438790668","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283537","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=283537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}