Shedeur Sanders got a motivational pep talk after his NFL Draft slide from KFC’s Colonel Sanders

Shedeur Sanders was the leading topic of conversation all weekend at the 2025 NFL Draft. The former Colorado star was long projected as a first-round pick, but as Thursday neared, there were rumblings he was falling down boards and potentially out of the first round. 

That scuttle proved to be true, but what no one foresaw was his slide continuing until Saturday, as he wasn’t picked until the fifth round by the Cleveland Browns with the 144th overall selection. In total, five quarterbacks got taken in front of Shedeur, including the Browns selecting Dillon Gabriel in the third round before taking Sanders. That is a staggering number considering this was not a strong QB class, and much of the discussion in the NFL world over the past few days has focused on how he managed to fall so far. 

His fall out of the first round was largely football related, but him ending up in the fifth round had much more to do with his interviews and how he handled the pre-draft process. While Sanders has said all of the right things in the immediate aftermath of his slide and seems to be taking it all in stride, it’s hard to imagine this weekend didn’t hurt him at least a bit. 

Plenty of people have put their public support behind Sanders (none more than Mel Kiper Jr. on ESPN’s Draft broadcast), and he got a surprisingly motivational pep talk from another Sanders on social media over the weekend, as KFC’s Colonel Sanders had some words of wisdom for him.  

Sanders certainly won’t be lacking in the motivation department as he makes his move to the next level after being passed over 143 times before finally getting selected, but in case he needed it, he can take solace in another fellow Sanders’ journey to success.