Top prospects take a stand against the draft ever 21 years. It happened in 1983 with John Elway, and it happened again in 2004, with Eli Manning.
Rozelle’s Comet is due to show up again next year. And it quite possibly will.
Although there are no indications that USC quarterback Caleb Williams will try to avoid playing for the Bears, it’s possible that, come 2024, Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders will stiff arm the team that tries to draft him.
Appearing on SiriusXM Mad Dog Radio with Chris Russo, Colorado head coach Deion Sanders addressed the question of the Bears drafting Williams. Deion at one point pivoted to the impact of Chicago weather on Caleb’s career.
“Let me tell you something that I have a problem with,” Deion told Russo. “And this kid can flat out play, I think he’s the best one on the board this year for sure. A kid that’s coming from California for the last couple years, right? And went to Oklahoma. That’s not terribly cold. Chicago’s cold, man. You gotta think about that kind of stuff when you’re taking a young man. Like see, when you take a guy from Ohio State and you bring him to Chicago, OK, I could understand that. But from California to Chicago? Not only that, they added what? One or two more games in the NFL. Seventeen games. Come on, man. You gotta factor in that stuff. That stuff matters.
“Like, I don’t want my kid [Shedeur] going nowhere cold next year. He grew up in Texas. He played in Jackson, played in Colorado. Season’s over before it gets cold in Colorado. I’m just thinking way ahead. I don’t want that for him.”
Will Deion make that known next year? In 2004, Archie Manning took the heat for Eli, when Eli didn’t want to play for the Chargers. Deion could do the same for Shedeur, if a team that plays in the elements in a cold-weather city decides that it wants him.
Less than half of the league falls into that category: Chicago, Green Bay, Kansas City, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo, New York (two teams), Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, and Denver (yes, Colorado can be cold at times). Still, if any of those teams ends up thinking about drafting Shedeur in 2025 (and most of those teams have or will have their quarterbacks in place for years to come), they might want to be 100-percent sure that Deion and Shedeur are fully on board with it.
