Tyler Shough Of Louisville Is Third QB Off The Board In NFL Draft, And Still No Shedeur Sanders

NFL teams listening to draft gurus and reading media coverage of Shedeur Sanders the past few months had to be chuckling because after the New Orleans Saints selected Tyler Shough in the second round on Friday evening, Sanders is now off on the NFL draft margins.

The New Orleans Saints selected Shough with the No. 40 pick in the draft.

Shough is the third quarterback selected this draft, and the first selected in the second round.

And Sanders? 

Nope. Not yet.

And perhaps not for a little while yet.

That, obviously, is not what anyone expected – certainly not even President Donald Trump.

A Draft Lesson To Be Learned

But we're probably going to have to use this as something of an NFL draft lesson. And here's the lesson:

NFL teams don't care about the legacy a player brings to the draft process. So it obviously doesn't matter that Shedeur is the son of Hall of Famer Deion Sanders.

NFL teams don't care about media grades. And so those who had Sanders as the best or second-best quarterback prospect in this draft mattered not one bit.

NFL teams also don't care about injuries and age as much as they do potential.

That seems to be in effect when comparing Shough and Sanders.

Shough is clearly the winner of the eye test. He's 6-foot-4 and 220 pounds. Sanders is 6-1 and 215-ish pounds.

Shough ran a 4.6 at the NFL scouting combine. Sanders didn't run a 40 at the combine or his pro day but scouts believe he runs in the 4.8 range.

Saints Unworried About Shough's Red Flags

And, oh yeah, the knock about Shough's age disappeared for the Saints. The prospect will be 26 years old in September after he played seven years in college.

That didn't matter to a team that needed to have an answer at quarterback, with Derek Carr facing uncertainty based on his mysterious shoulder injury the club has mostly declined to discuss.

Shough, it should be noted, is a great athlete. 

He's mobile.

He's fast.

He's big.

He's played both under center and in shotgun.

But he had three injuries at three different schools, which is the reason he's older than other prospects. The Saints obviously got beyond the injury history and age.

And now Shough is going to have Kellen Moore working with him.

Written by

Armando Salguero is a national award-winning columnist and is OutKick's Senior NFL Writer. He has covered the NFL since 1990 and is a selector for the Pro Football Hall of Fame and a voter for the Associated Press All-Pro Team and Awards. Salguero, selected a top 10 columnist by the APSE, has worked for the Miami Herald, Miami News, Palm Beach Post and ESPN as a national reporter. He has also hosted morning drive radio shows in South Florida.