Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders wants the NFL to know that he’s a pocket passer first and foremost, and only uses his running ability if that’s what his team needs him to do.
Sanders said on NFL Network that he has always viewed playing from the pocket as the most important component of his game, and that when he escaped the pocket in college it was because that was out of necessity, not because it’s the way he likes to play the position.
“It always worked in the league. Look at the history of the league, not everybody was a big-time runner back then, back in the day,” Sanders said. “The greatest quarterback ever, Tom Brady, he didn’t run too much. I feel like the best thing for me is to play from the pocket. That’s where I’m most comfortable. The difference is, I’m able to adjust for my team, so if I need to be able to take different types of drops, if I need to get a little more active, then I’m able to do that and adjust my game. That’s a lot of what we did the first year at Colorado, I had to adjust my game to get more success based on what we had on the roster.”
Sanders didn’t run a lot in college and actually finished with negative rushing yards in both of his seasons at Colorado. (The NCAA, unlike the NFL, counts yards lost on sacks as negative rushing yards for a quarterback.) He’s nowhere near as fast as his Hall of Fame father Deion Sanders was, and although Shedeur is certainly faster than Brady, he knows that the path to success in the NFL is to model his game on the greatest.
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