Ex-Steeler Bashes Shedeur Sanders After Pittsburgh Passes On QB In Draft

Merril Hoge was happy to see his former team not select Shedeur Sanders in the 2025 NFL Draft.

Pittsburgh was viewed as a likely landing spot for Sanders, arguably the second-best quarterback in this year’s draft class. But not only did the Steelers not select the Colorado product with the 21st overall pick, they also avoided him entirely. Sanders waited until Day 3 of the draft to hear his name called by the Cleveland Browns.

Hoge, who played seven of his eight seasons in Pittsburgh, seemingly wasn’t surprised to see the 23-year-old slide to the 144th overall pick in the draft.

“There’s some toughness to him I like, but how he moves, he ain’t going to put fear in anybody,” Hoge recently said on WDVE, as transcribed by Sports Illustrated.

“Nobody threw more bubble screens than Shedeur Sanders when it mattered. In the college environment, it can be hard to translate a kid to where he’s going to play, so you have to look deeper into it, you have to find things that simulate the NFL. You’re not going to throw 50% of your bubble screens and survive in the NFL. You can do that in college. They’ll sit there and say their offensive line was bad and so that’s why we did those type of things. But if your quarterback is good, you can run everything. You don’t just have to run a bubble screen.”

The Steelers, who entered the draft with only Mason Rudolph and Skylar Thompson on their signal-caller depth chart, did add to their quarterback room through the draft. Mike Tomlin and company took a flier on Will Howard in the sixth round, 41 picks after the Browns drafted Sanders.