Mel Kiper’s consistent harping on Shedeur Sanders’ slide during the 2025 NFL Draft ticked some viewers off.
It also ticked off Rece Davis, who said yelling into the void about the league is a meaningless act, and tried to bring Kiper back to what was at hand on the ESPN broadcast.
However, Davis, who hosted the network’s coverage of Rounds 4-7 after doing ABC for Rounds 1-3 on Thursday and Friday, insists there is no animosity between the coworkers during a recent appearance on OutKick’s “Don’t @ Me with Dan Dakich.”
“It’s fine. I didn’t even know there was an issue until I started getting texts like you were saying,” Davis said. “It’s sort of part and parcel of what we do. Sometimes, for the analyst’s own good and for the good of the show, you challenge their position. Mel’s great. I love working with Mel. And he’s the reason the draft is what it is, in my opinion.”
During the second day of the draft, ESPN’s lead analyst couldn’t comprehend the slide of the polarizing former Colorado quarterback.
“I think it’s disgusting,” Kiper said. “I don’t understand what the heck’s going on with this. Fifth player on my board, it’s never happened in 47 years where a player that high has dropped this far into the fourth round at quarterback.”
And even after Sanders finally was selected by the Browns during the fifth round as the No. 144 overall pick, Kiper still couldn’t come back down to earth, calling the NFL “clueless.”
“The NFL has been clueless for 50 years when it comes to evaluating quarterbacks! Clueless!..” Kiper said.
Louis Reddick chimed in, concluding his argument against Kiper with: “The draft has spoken.”
Davis then said, “That’s the key, Mel. It’s not putting a value judgement on whether those picks were right or wrong…Whether you like it or you don’t like it. Whether they are fair or unfair, you have to deal with it. And now Shedeur Sanders has to deal with it….And I think yelling at the NFL about it is not productive.”
“First of all, and I’m not doing that thing that Pete Thamel accuses me of, where I say two things nice about somebody and then offer a critique or something,” Davis continued on the Outkick podcast. “But, the reason there were…whatever the number was in Detroit is largely due to what Mel’s done for the draft. And Mel’s job is to make his rankings of the players, and defend them. And I didn’t mind him disagreeing, and I don’t mind him saying anything he wanted to say when we’re there. But I thought that as a group, the part we were overlooking was the old Occam’s razor philosophy — the most likely explanation for something is probably correct. We don’t know for sure.
“But it was almost certain that at that point in the draft that something had happened in the pre-draft process involving Shedeur Sanders that was keeping teams from taking him. Now, I think it’s a reasonable debate if you say he’s not a top-five quarterback on tape at this time. I’m not sure that it’s reasonable that he’s not a first or second-round type guy. That seems a little unreasonable to me. So, if you go beyond that, then something else probably happened. And my point was I didn’t think we were giving that the proper credence. If teams are drafting a guy they’re not 1000% sold on is going to be their franchise quarterback… then you have to bigger than your problems.”
Sanders certainly wasn’t bigger than his posed problems, from dealing with his outspoken father Deion Sanders to botching some of his NFL interviews due to a lack of attention to detail.
Still, the draft guru was a big believer in Sanders that he had him ranked his best quarterback entering the draft.
Kiper ranked Sanders as the No. 5 overall player on his big board — one spot ahead of fellow quarterback Cam Ward, who went No. 1 overall.
