NFL scouts, GMs had eye-opening opinions on where Shedeur Sanders would've been drafted in 2024

One anonymous NFL scout believes that Shedeur Sanders would've been selected over Caleb Williams had he declared for the 2024 NFL draft.

"He was QB1 for me if he came out this year," a longtime NFL evaluator told The Washington Post (h/t CBS Sports). "You have to manage him a little differently, and Deion is going to be heavily involved … so you have to be prepared to deal with that bullshit. But I love watching that kid play. He's a born winner."

Will Shedeur have been allowed to play for the Chicago Bears, though? His father, Deion Sanders, made a point to say that he didn't want his son to play in a cold-weather city; saying the same about Williams. The Windy City ended up with the USC quarterback regardless.

An unnamed NFL GM didn't go as far as the scout who had Shedeur as QB1, but the exec did say that the "Grown QB" was a top-three signal-caller, seemingly landing him in New England to play for Jerod Mayo's Patriots.

"Absolutely, he was a first-round pick," the GM prefaced before saying, "Absolutely. There would have been seven [taken in the first round]. We obviously didn't do as much work on him as the other quarterbacks once he announced he wasn't coming out, but he would have been in the top three [quarterbacks] for us this year, I think, had he gone through the entire process. He probably would have been up there with [Caleb] Williams and [Jayden] Daniels."

Shedeur Sanders 2024 NFL draft talk irrelevant right now

In a way, you can almost see what the narrative will be if Shedeur doesn't end up being the No. 1 pick in the 2025 NFL draft: Coach Prime held his son back by making him return to Colorado in 2024 even though he would've been the top pick.

After The Athletic's hit piece released right after the Black and Gold spring game that focused on players dismissed in 2023, The Washington Post is now doing another retroactive analysis that adds little to the conversation right now.

The focus should be on the 2024 Colorado season and, if one needs to talk about the NFL draft, the 2025 one.