'Surgeon and magician:' Why Joel Klatt believes in Colorado QB Shedeur Sanders
"He shows you a little bit of Joe Montana. He shows you a little bit of Fran Tarkenton." The Fox Sports analyst is all, all, ALL in on the Colorado quarterback. Full transcript inside.
Each spring, a prospect receives the full high school biology frog dissection. A quarterback is poked… and prodded… and debated nonstop. It’s justified. Quarterback decisions decide the fate of all inside an NFL building.
This year, that player is Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders. There’s never been a doubt. Of course the son of Deion Sanders would be a lightning rod. Naturally, our first conversation this spring with a college football expert focuses plenty on this year’s most polarizing prospect.
What an enlightening chat this was with Joel Klatt of Fox Sports.
We posted the audio and video earlier.
Below is the written transcript.
We get into the 2025 NFL Draft, everything Shedeur Sanders (including the one team that makes the most sense), the quarterback class as a whole (is there a sleeper in the mid-rounds?), the value of experience, the predraft discourse and the upcoming UFL season. Klatt, a former college QB himself at Colorado, will again be the color commentator at Fox for spring football where former Go Long Pod co-host Jim Monos is the GM of the Memphis Showboats.
Thanks, all.
An honor to welcome on the great Joel Klatt. How are you?
Klatt: I’m good. It’s good to chat with you. We were talking a little bit before we started about our joys of fatherhood.
I want to ask how you do it because you’re on TV. You’ve got the Joel Klatt Show. You’re going to be covering the UFL this year. College football. The draft. You’re everywhere. So how in the hell have you managed to balance all the above with three boys?
Klatt: It helps when you love what you do, so it doesn’t always feel like work. And I’m fortunate. Other than traveling as much as I do, I feel like because my career is so much different than a normal Monday through Friday job, I get a lot of time with my kids. Maybe someone in the normal workforce doesn’t get to take ‘em to school, pick ‘em up from school, be around in-particular in the offseason. I might miss a few Friday nights or a few more Saturdays than the next guy. But trying to balance it with being intentional with the time that I do have with them is important. They’re about to get home. It’s 3:04 here on the west coast as we’re recording this, and they’re going to be storming through the door here in about 15 minutes. So I’m excited about that.
Let’s dive right into the NFL draft first because I know everybody’s obsessed with free agency, as they should be. It’s 24 hours of absolute mayhem and then it slows down to the second wave and the third wave, and then everybody comes up for air like Jumanji Robin Williams: “What year is it?” Every year — when it comes to the quarterbacks — we hype it up. You see Malik Willis highlights nonstop and reality knocks you in the head when he drops to the third round. You’ve watched Shedeur Sanders, you’ve watched Cam Ward. What do you make of the quarterback class? Is it good? Is it not good?
Klatt: It’s experienced. These quarterbacks are incredibly experienced. There are probably a few different guys that could be the next Brock Purdy. I don’t think that there’s any Josh Allens in this class or Patrick Mahomes obviously. So are there guys that can be elite-level quarterbacks? I don’t know. Maybe Cam and maybe Shedeur can grow into that depending on the fit with their organization and how they continue to mature and grow and develop. But outside of that, there’s a ton of guys that have played a lot of football, and I always talk about this when it comes to the draft. This position is so reps-dependent and experience-dependent.
If you go back to when Tom Brady won his first Super Bowl — go all the way back to about 2000 — if you study the guys who have won Super Bowls at the quarterback position, I’ve done this experiment where I go and look at their college career. What were they as college quarterbacks? How experienced were they? And what you will find is on average, those guys all started well over 30 games, attempted nearly a thousand passes, a lot of ‘em well over 50, 60 touchdowns. And that experience level is something that a two-year player doesn’t really get. He gets into the 20s in starts. Stafford played a ton of football. There’s a lot of guys with a lot of experience. And so this class, while maybe not the flashiest class, could produce someone that down the line is going to win a Super Bowl.
Look at last year, right? Jayden Daniels is at Arizona State with Herm Edwards and he moves on to LSU. Gets a ton of starts. Bo Nix played about as long as Ed Cota was a point guard at North Carolina. It seems like these guys play forever, but it mattered. Bill Parcells wanted X amount of starts in college to really believe in a guy in the pros, and I feel like it’s coming around to that. We all got hyped up about Anthony Richardson, and he had one year at Florida. Now, it’s do or die for him.
Klatt: Unfortunately for him, but it happened with Trey Lance. Remember we had no film on Trey Lance coming out of North Dakota State. The skills were there. But you don’t know how they actuate into games. I can just tell you from firsthand experience, there is no replicating playing in a game for a quarterback. You can’t replicate it at all. It’s one of the only positions in all of sports that there’s nothing you can do on a practice field to actually replicate what it’s going to be like during a game. And I think that’s why it’s so important that these guys have so many starts under their belt.
You’re going to see something, register it, throw it in the operating system and see it again at some point. So based on that, who do you think gained the best experience? Maybe it’s one of those top two guys, or maybe it’s a darkhorse. Who do you like into this draft?
Klatt: Oh gosh. Because of how I couched that first answer, I actually like a lot of these guys because any number of them I think can go and succeed and start in the NFL. Quinn Ewers is one of those guys. I think Will Howard’s going to be able to start in the National Football League. I wouldn't put it past a Riley Leonard to use his experience to potentially hook on in the NFL. But the two guys at the top for me are Cam Ward and Shedeur Sanders.
And namely, I’m a believer in Shedeur because I saw Colorado before anyone was watching. Everyone is like, “Yeah, Colorado was OK.” And it’s like, “Yeah, but folks, they were a one-win team prior to him getting there. And the reason they were any good is Shedeur Sanders.” We can give all the credit in the world to Deion Sanders and Travis Hunter, but a corner/wide receiver and a head coach and their impact on a program — namely the wins and losses for the team — pale in comparison to the quarterback. So the environment that Shedeur is about to walk into, taking over a team that is not up to par and candidly is going to be less talented than a lot of the teams that they’re playing, he’s already done that. When that’s generally speaking never the case for a quarterback that’s going to get selected in the top five or 10 or 15 in the NFL Draft. They’re generally coming from programs that had a lot of success winning football games and their talent level is a disparity on the plus side for them as opposed to their opposition versus what Shedeur’s was over the last couple of years. So I think Shedeur is going to succeed. I know that people think he might need a pocket, they don’t like his attitude, so on and so forth. He is equal parts surgeon and magician. He shows you a little bit of Joe Montana at times. He shows you a little bit of Fran Tarkenton at times buying time. I think he’s very smart and I hope he succeeds at the next level.
If anybody knows the state of the Colorado football program, it’s Joel Klatt. You were the starting quarterback in ’03, ’04 and ’05. What did the Sanders family walk into when they took over Colorado?
Klatt: They took over a program that was irrelevant and destitute. There was nothing going on. It barely had a heartbeat. Barely. I mean, barely. You’re talking about a program that had one winning football season for the better part of 20 years. If you were growing up and being recruited to play college football and someone mentioned the name “Colorado,” they would’ve been like, “What’s going on there?” Because in the short period of those players’ lives who are 16, 17, and 18 years old, Colorado had done nothing. I mean, nothing. They had done nothing. So what Deion stepped into and what Shedeur stepped into was a vacuum. And I think Colorado did the right thing in terms of, “Hey, let’s become relevant by handing the keys to someone who can attract attention and be his own gravitational pull.” See, normally in college football, if you’re trying to make a hire for a coach, you’re trying to match up who best fits what we do. And so you’re trying to find a guy that has a bit of gravity to him and you’re trying to match it to what gravity you have or equity you have in your program. The problem with Colorado is they had nothing. So they needed a guy that was going to be on his own and immediately be a gravitational pull, which is why it was such a smart hire. You can argue with it all you want. If you don’t like Deion Sanders style, that’s fine. But what he’s done at Colorado, you can’t argue with. Their strategy paid off and it has worked because they walked into a total void as far as success goes. And last year, let’s face it, they were playing really meaningful football games late into November as it related to the Big 12 Championship as well as the College Football Playoff. And that’s less than 19 games removed from being a one-win team.
This point last year, we’re talking about Michael Penix turning around Washington, but Washington was a reputable program before he got there. Same with Bo Nix at Oregon. Caleb with USC. Jayden Daniels with LSU. This is a totally different deal with Colorado. So what did Shedeur Sanders do? What traits does he possess to have that kind of effect as the quarterback to make this program relevant? What do you think he’s doing day-to-day to change things?
Klatt: First off, it’s just confidence. All of a sudden, he walked into the locker room and he was like, “Hey guys, we’re going to be good.” And everyone’s like, “What do you mean? We haven’t been good for 20 years?” And he’s like, “Yeah, I don’t care. I don’t care.” So there is an air of confidence that I think that you have to have as a quarterback. In-particular, if you’re going into that setting to turn a culture around, you’re going to have to believe when there’s not a lot of belief around you. And he certainly believes in himself, and in the process. So that’s No. 1. And then when you go on to the field, he’s hyper-accurate with the football. He throws the most catchable ball of any of the quarterbacks in this draft. And when you actually break down the film, he did it behind a patchwork paper-thin offensive line, and yet he was still putting the ball in the right spots, in the right timing. To me, that’s surgical.
Then, he had this amazing ability to extend plays. Not necessarily make plays with his legs. But extend plays and give himself an opportunity to impact the game as a passer. That’s pretty special. And that’s ultimately what he was able to do. He attracted other talent and then the game was on his shoulders. They weren’t running the football, guys — I’m just telling you that right now — behind that offensive line. So he understands what it’s like to be back there and be the reason that you’re either going to win or lose because he was certainly in that position last year and even more so the year before.
There were reports that some teams didn’t like his attitude in these 18-minute speed dates at the Combine. Do you think there’s anything to that? Do you think that teams could realistically be turned off by the swagger?
Klatt: And the sky is blue and water is wet. We’re always going to hear about what the media deems to be the more polarizing players. This is a rinse-and-repeat story. It’s the laziest story in the draft process. Every single year, we are going to take a player that is a polarizing player. And on Tuesday or Wednesday, some publication, some guy’s going to be like, “I heard some of his meetings didn’t go great.” And everyone’s like, “Oh, really? I knew it! I knew it!” Because again, it’s polarizing. So it’s a clickbait story, it’s a lazy story. And I’m just telling you right now, go back in history, you’re going to see this story. Go forward in history and you will see this story. It just so happens that this year that story’s going to be about Shedeur Sanders. There’s plenty of teams that liked him. There’s plenty of teams that maybe didn’t. And guess what? That’s every player. Very rarely do you get every single team being like, “Oh yeah, man, that guy was great, that cat was awesome.” In-particular when it comes to quarterbacks and in-particular when it’s only one team that really needs it.
This is like a house, right? If you don’t get the house or you’re not in position to buy the house, you’re going to be like, “That house wasn’t good, anyways. The location wasn’t good. I didn’t like the tile in the bathroom. I didn’t like the color of the front door.” And guess what? You weren’t going to get the house anyways. NFL organizations know this. The reporters know this. So they go to some organization that has no chance or directive to draft Shedeur Sanders and they’re like, “What did you think?” And some guy’s like, “I didn't really like him.” And then they’re like, “Boom, story.” And it’s lazy. It’s really terrible. And it happens every year. And these people don’t understand that, it’s like, “Hey, one, it’s probably not true. And two, what are we doing?”
The full portrait of a prospect is important. It’s not all going to be rainbows, puppies, and flowers. Some prospects aren’t going to work out. And I think it is good for the fans to hear all sides. I’m thinking of Caleb Williams last year. I’ve talked to people around him and they describe an empathetic leader. Emotional intelligence. Teammates loved him, coaches loved him.
Klatt: We heard that same exact story about Caleb Williams and it’s like, “Well, what do his teammates say about him? What did his teammates in college say about him? And what will his teammates in the NFL say about him?” I love the draft, because you’re seeing the starting line and the roster compilation and guys that will be stars in the NFL. And I love that. I despise the Combine. I think the Combine is awful. I hate it. I hate it.
Last thing on Shedeur and I think it's an important note. You’d probably be able to speak to this better than anybody. Deion’s got swagger. Deion’s got attitude. His Dad was his coach, but his Dad was probably hard as hell on him. That can be a positive. I don’t think he was coddled.
Klatt: He definitely wasn't coddled. He was sacked 90 times in two years. And Deion never ran out there and picked him up. He got up every single time. The guy’s tough as nails. You can’t argue with that. I think that the expectation from his coach, in this case, was excellence at all times. Always. And let’s just say it comes with a price to have that name on your back his whole life. He’s had to be Deion’s son his entire life. So every single time he walked out there for a little league game, every single time he walked out there for a high school football game, then for a college football game, every single guy put a bull’s eye on his back because he’s Deion’s son. It’s like, “I want to make my mark against that guy.” So he has been the target on every field he’s been on since he’s been stepping onto fields, and he has handled it pretty well.
You need some shit to you if that’s your name, and you’re going out there at every level and everybody knows who you are, and the expectations are sky high every second, every play of every game. If you’re an introvert and you’re scared of your own shadow, you’re dead. Expectations will eat you alive. Instead, you’re going to be at the Combine with the hat sideways and going into meetings a certain way. I would think there’s a coach out there, a team out there that would appreciate that.
Klatt: There will be.
I could see Brian Daboll and the Giants loving that.
Klatt: I think the Giants are a great landing spot for him. I’ll be a bit surprised if they don’t take him.
Does he get to three or do they have to get to two?
Klatt: They may have to get to two. Cleveland, who knows man, who knows about Cleveland? And if you’re Shedeur and Deion, do you want to go to Cleveland? If you’re putting together a list of places I may not want to end up, wouldn’t Cleveland be on that?
Maybe paying Myles Garrett and having this Hall of Fame talent at least shows him, “We’re not giving up. We want to be relevant.” But yeah, it’s been since 1999, not much has gone right at the quarterback position. Let’s talk UFL. We’ve got some real football around the corner. What has you most excited about the UFL entering another year here?
Klatt: If I had to boil it down, I’ve now been part of spring football — this is going to be my fourth year. I did two USFL years and then the UFL after the merger. The USFL and the XFL merged and last year it became the UFL. What I’ve seen in the three previous seasons is that — No. 1 — spring football works. People enjoy it. A lot of people watch. It might not be the ratings of the NFL or even major college football, but for the spring, it does very well. So this works and it provides an avenue of opportunity for all of these players. That’s the second thing that I love. Being a former player myself who was on the bubble, I was just an unsigned free agent that had to earn my way into the New Orleans camp or Detroit camp. And so the opportunity to go out there and put together the film at the professional level is important.
And then lastly — every single year of these first three — the play has gotten better. I thought it took a big jump after the merger last year and the play got much better and more sustainable last year. And that’s only going to continue. I’ve been talking with some of the people surrounding the league about the scrimmages and some of the practices that we’re seeing right now currently as the players and teams prepare for the season and they’re saying cuts are going to be the hardest that they’ve ever been. That speaks to the level of play growing. And that’s something that I’m really excited for this year because last year to me was a breakthrough in terms of the play. Specifically from the quarterback position. And if we continue that going forward, then not only is this league going to be something that works, but it’s going to be sustainable and it’s going to be very successful moving forward.
The UFL hasn’t gone the gimmick route or tried to find some ridiculous name, some reality TV star just to get cheap eyeballs. This has really been building the right way. What goes into the construction of a team in trying to build it meticulously at this level vs. “Hey! Johnny Manziel, come on in, man!”
Klatt: Yeah, I think that’s been important. I really do. It has eschewed the short-term success or the short-term gain of some names that aren’t as good of players for the quality of play. And maybe in the short term that’s painful. But in the long term, that’s going to be much more sustainable. One of the big things that has worked for this league is the fact that it’s not a gimmick and it actually leans into football. Let me give you an example of that. So if you are into spring football, you probably love the sport a lot. And there are millions of Americans that do. We get close to a million viewers on these games on average. That means some of ‘em are getting much higher viewership than that. And what we’re giving you from a broadcast standpoint is the ability to go deeper into the sport that you love.
Not just flashy with a name and be like, “Hey, remember he was great at such and such school! He was a former first round!” This or that. But rather we’re going to put mics on the coaches, we’re going to put mics on the players. Not so we can hear them trash talk — although that’s entertaining — but we can hear them call the plays. We can hear the interaction of the coaching development. So at home, what you want from us as broadcasters and the broadcast in general is access and discovery. Access to things and places that you’ve never had access for and discovery of things that you don’t know yet. And if we can give you that access and discovery, then you’re going to have a good time being a part of that telecast. And that’s something that the UFL has leaned totally into. And the USFL before that. Giving the football fan, the hardcore college or NFL football fan, more of what they want from a football perspective, I think has worked. And it’s something that I’ve really enjoyed because my telecast is different than it is in the fall. If in the fall, I’m trying to unlock a Rubik’s cube and push you forward with the broadcast. In the spring, I’m basically a translator and I’m trying to take what we’re hearing and make sure that you understand what you just heard.
You know what it reminds me of? You’ve probably have read this book: “Start with Why,” by Simon Sinek.
Klatt: Yeah, Simon Sinek. He’s terrific.
I just read it a second time and you can’t get enough. But this is what, 2010, when it came out. He gets into manipulations and how easy it is to get baited by, okay, “30 percent off” whatever you’re selling. Something cheap, something quick, something that’s going to sell and give you a short-term thrill. But the long-term sustainability is doing the work, having that why, having a purpose that’s focused. And it seems like that’s what the UFL has really done here to last long term. Because a lot of these leagues haven’t lasted. Maybe that’s how this is going to be different.
Klatt: He basically says that no one buys what you do. They buy why you do it. And he brings up Apple as an example of this, as a company that does a great job of selling their why, and then they just attach a product on the end of it. Which is why you’ll buy a phone, a laptop and earbuds and all of it from Apple because you trust them. They’re not a phone company or a computer company or an earbud company. They’re a company that you buy their why. Well, if you were taking that principle, the UFL starts with why. We love football, period. We love everything about football, and we want you to be closer to the sport than you’ve ever been before. We’re going to do that by giving you access to microphones and drones and different types of cameras. And we’re going to do that by putting the best possible rosters together and putting on this football game. We’re going to do that via spring football, and this is the league that we’re going to give you. And that’s the arc of what a Simon Sinek would kind of talk about with the UFL.
You’re probably doing your research like crazy right now, learning about these teams, learning about these players. Is there a storyline that has captured your eye as you get into this?
Klatt: It’s hard not to start with Birmingham. If you’re unfamiliar with spring football. The Birmingham Stallions have won three straight championships. They won the first two USFL Championships. Then after the merger, they won the first UFL Championship. So Skip Holtz, the former La Tech coach — a really incredible coach — has unlocked the code of how to be successful in spring football. And he’s done it with different quarterbacks every single year. But they’re going for a four-peat. We’re talking about how hard it was for the Chiefs to win three. The Stallions are trying to win four in a row, and they’re actually bringing back Alex McGough and Alex McGough two years ago won a championship for them in the USFL and was the league MVP before he was on the practice squad for the Green Bay Packers for a couple of years. He’s a really good player and he’s coming back to the Stallions and actually going to play for Skip again. He was remarkable and terrific in the last year that he played spring football. So that’s one of the storylines that I’m really excited about.
And then other than that, you talk about the innovation and whether it was the rules of the kickoff and the way that we bring the mics and the access into your home. And then also I would say that Fox has a bit of a different strategy this year in terms of Friday night — on broadcast. We’re showcasing Friday Night Football. We did it in the fall with the Big Ten. We’ve been doing it all winter with college basketball. But every Friday night you can count on Fox to bring you, not only a marquee matchup within our league partners, but something that’s done really well on the broadcast network. Most Fridays, I’ll be on your TV in your living room, and we’re going to be bringing you UFL football on Friday nights.
Jace Sternberger, a former Go Long podcast guest, has been tearing it up.
Klatt: He’s been really good. He has been incredibly good for the Stallions. He’s been a dominant force for them for the duration of his time with Skip Holtz. He was an All-American at Texas A&M, a third-round pick, and he’s been really good in spring ball.
And finally, we’ve got to get a Memphis Showboat prognostication. We’re biased. Admittedly, we want Jim Monos to go undefeated and take it to everybody they face. But give us a lowdown on this team.
Klatt: Memphis has struggled a little bit. Two years ago, they had a really good start to the year and then kind of struggled down the stretch. And for me, it’s primarily about the fact that they haven’t been able to get out of this mode where they can take on and beat Birmingham. Birmingham has this capture over the league and teams play differently against them because they’ve been so successful. So from a Memphis standpoint, I think they’ve got to look at their opportunity to beat Birmingham. They’ve had chances. A lot of these games are one-possession games. The majority of ‘em. They’ve got to find a way to win that one play in order to take the next step to beat Birmingham and kind of move forward from that. Because right now that’s kind of a ceiling over their head. … I am excited for Memphis because Ken Whisenhunt is going to be their head coach. So he’s coming in from the NFL. So I think that gives them a little bit better perspective and maybe experience to hopefully take that next step.
And if Monos leads Memphis to glory, clearly an NFL team should come knocking. If you turn around those Showboats, you deserve to take over…
Klatt: Or a college team because everyone’s hiring GMs at the college level. You can go be a college GM these days.
One more for you. Syracuse Football. Is Syracuse back with Fran Brown?
Klatt: OK, I loved Syracuse last year. They were really good, really good. Quality wide receivers. Their back was tremendous. He had like 60 catches, 1,000 yards rushing, and McCord was obviously great at quarterback, plus their schedule set up so well for them last year. They missed all the big boys in the ACC. That’s the opposite next year. And they’re going to have to replace a lot of those key players. If I had to give you a prediction for Syracuse, they may take a small step back, but it’s not because Fran’s doing anything wrong, it’s just that the circumstances around the year are going to be so different, namely because of losing a quarterback in McCord. And secondly, the schedule and how much more difficult it gets as opposed to last year.
It’s got to be hard to analyze college football with all these transfers.
Klatt: There’s just more movement. It makes it harder this time of year because I could spend a lot of time on college teams right now and I watch their film. But that’s more to get a feel for a coach and his system. The rosters are going to change. They’re going to change again in the next transfer portal window. So from an actual personnel standpoint, it’s really hard to do much work really until the end of that spring portal season.
You find a way though, Joel. With three boys, too, who are going to be home very shortly out there on the west coast if they aren’t already.
Klatt: They’re downstairs. They’re being quiet. I love it.
We’ve got bedtime here on the east coast, so I better help with the witching hour. Thanks so much, man. Really appreciate all the time.
Klatt: You bet, Tyler. Yeah, absolutely.