From claims that NFL teams were racist after the 2025 draft to sports commentators bringing up Colin Kaepernick, the discussion around Shedeur Sanders has started to feel familiar to anyone who has followed Angel Reese’s WNBA career. In some circles, criticism of any kind is treated as a microaggression.
The debate over Sanders has grown increasingly heated. Questions about his football are recast as evidence of bias, while some fans suggest NFL executives conspired to hold back a young quarterback. People who doubt his ability can quickly find themselves accused of more than simply disliking his game.
When Sanders doesn’t get the playing time, praise, or attention his supporters think he deserves, some respond by alleging racism. That reaction recalls the way discussion of Reese has often unfolded.
I think Sanders has become the NFL’s version of Angel Reese—not because of anything either athlete has necessarily done on the field or in public, but because some of their most devoted supporters have built an exhausting story around victimhood. The parallels are hard to miss.
Question Sanders’ decisions, pocket presence, interviews, or press conferences? You may be called racist. Raise concerns about Reese’s shooting efficiency, shot selection, or how she compares with Caitlin Clark? You could face accusations of racial bias.
And suggesting another quarterback should get a chance ahead of Sanders, or that Clark is the more compelling player, can bring the same response.
In some corners of sports social media, every disagreement gets filtered through race: Black versus white, oppressor versus oppressed, victim versus villain. It’s tiring, and prominent media figures have sometimes made the situation worse.
When Sanders fell to the fifth round of the 2025 NFL Draft, the Cleveland Browns eventually picked him 144th overall. That was a long way from the first-round selection some had expected during the buildup to the draft.
Rather than consider that teams might have concerns about his skills, personality, football knowledge, work habits, maturity, or fit, several well-known sports commentators quickly suggested there was something more troubling behind his slide.
ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith was among the most vocal. As Sanders continued to fall, Smith compared the situation to the NFL’s treatment of former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, saying, “This feels like (Colin) Kaepernick-level collusion.”
Smith also suggested NFL owners were acting together against Sanders and might have been influenced by their dislike of his father, Deion Sanders. Think about the leap being made: independent personnel decisions by 32 teams were presented as possible evidence of a coordinated effort to hold down Shedeur, allegedly in part because of his race.
Smith wasn’t the only one making that kind of argument. Skip Bayless initially called Sanders’ fall in the draft one of the most disgusting developments in draft history. After Sanders had a strong preseason debut against the Carolina Panthers in August 2025, Bayless went further, saying the NFL had looked like “a whole bunch of petty fools and, in some cases, racist fools.”
Bayless also argued that teams had passed on Sanders because they disliked his father and that Sanders had embarrassed those organizations. But he did not offer evidence that any team had rejected the quarterback because of his race. One good preseason performance, apparently, was enough to suggest a league-wide racial conspiracy.
Former ESPN analyst Ryan Clark brought race into the discussion before the draft as well. He argued that Sanders faced extra scrutiny because he was a confident Black quarterback, and some of Sanders’ supporters have repeated versions of that claim online. Clark pointed to Sanders’ appearance, confidence, and skin color as factors in the criticism he received.
Those arguments often left little room for the football-related explanations behind Sanders’ draft position. CBS Sports NFL reporter Jonathan Jones had reported concerns about Sanders’ pre-draft process, while other accounts raised questions about his interviews, preparation, and readiness to adjust to the professional game. Former NFL quarterback Boomer Esiason also said some teams had taken Sanders off their draft boards altogether.
Could teams have evaluated Sanders incorrectly? Of course. They may also have overreacted to his personality or the attention surrounding his famous father. But a player being judged poorly is not automatically proof of discrimination. Sometimes a team simply doesn’t think a player is worth an early pick. That’s part of how the draft works.
Anyone who has followed the WNBA since Clark and Reese entered the league has seen a similar pattern. The two have been linked since their memorable college matchups, but some fans have turned their rivalry into something much more divisive than basketball.
For some Reese supporters, criticism of her offense—including jokes about her ability to rebound her own misses, which she has called “MeBounds”—is treated as more than an assessment of her play. It can become a question about the critic’s racial attitudes. Meanwhile, praise for Clark is sometimes drawn into arguments about racial privilege and how Black women are treated in professional sports.
ESPN’s Monica McNutt offered one example of how quickly the conversation can shift. After Clark committed a flagrant foul against Reese in May 2025, McNutt discussed allegations of racist fan behavior and asked whether the incident would have been viewed differently if Reese had committed the foul.
McNutt said the players were being cast in opposing roles, with one treated as a victim and the other as someone in need of protection. Her remarks were part of a wider discussion about racial double standards, but they also showed how quickly a basketball play can become a debate about race.
Race has been raised in many controversies involving Reese. The debate intensified when the WNBA investigated claims that fans had directed hateful comments and “monkey noises” at her during that Fever-Sky game. The league later said it could not substantiate those specific allegations.
Commissioner Cathy Engelbert also faced criticism in September 2024 after discussing the commercial appeal of the Clark-Reese rivalry without initially condemning racist fan behavior in the way several players and the players’ union wanted. Players, including DiJonai Carrington, criticized her response. Engelbert later clarified that racism and hatred had no place in the league.
Too often, discussion of Reese has turned into a racial grievance. It’s hard to watch.
Now the same kind of tension is playing out around Dillon Gabriel and Sanders. They joined the Browns’ quarterback room by very different routes: Gabriel was a third-round pick in 2025, while Sanders had to wait until the fifth round. For some Sanders supporters, that difference became another reason to question whether the NFL had treated him fairly because of race.
The two quarterbacks have become a ready-made subject for online arguments about who deserves opportunities and whether Cleveland has handled Sanders properly. Instead of letting them compete on their merits, some fans have made the contest about something larger.
A compliment for Gabriel can be framed as an insult to Sanders. Criticism of Sanders can prompt questions about the motives of coaches, executives, or commentators. It’s much like the arguments around Clark and Reese.
Rather than accept that athletes can have different strengths, weaknesses, and records, some supporters turn every disagreement into a moral campaign.
Here’s what makes the whole debate feel unnecessary: Sanders and Reese don’t need these narratives to establish their places in professional sports. Sanders was a productive college quarterback who earned an NFL opportunity. Reese won a national championship at LSU and has made her mark as a strong rebounder and, at times, an effective scorer in the WNBA.
Their accomplishments are real. So is the criticism of their play.
Sanders can be talented and still have weaknesses that NFL coaches and general managers need to assess. Reese can be an excellent rebounder while her scoring efficiency remains open to question. Neither observation is inherently racist, and neither athlete needs supporters to assume bad motives whenever someone offers an unfavorable opinion.
There’s an irony here: constantly framing the debate around race can end up doing a disservice to the athletes their fans say they want to defend. Instead of talking about Sanders’ development, people argue over whether NFL executives are racist. Instead of discussing Reese’s rebounding, scoring, or defense, the focus shifts to whether praise for Clark reflects racial favoritism.
When media personalities with large audiences make accusations without enough evidence, the conversation gets worse. Fans should be able to criticize a player without having their character put on trial. They should be able to support Gabriel—or, this season, Deshaun Watson—without hating Sanders, just as they should be able to celebrate Clark without disliking Reese.
Real racism deserves condemnation. Real discrimination deserves investigation. But disagreement isn’t discrimination, criticism isn’t persecution, and losing a competition doesn’t prove a conspiracy.
That’s a message some of Sanders’ and Reese’s loudest supporters may need to hear. When every setback is treated as proof of racial injustice, two accomplished athletes are cast as permanent victims in a culture war they don’t need to win.
When I see Sanders fans reply that any Black athlete with confidence and swagger makes white nationalists uncomfortable, I tend to roll my eyes. It seems possible that some people find Sanders immature or self-absorbed at times, or think he lacks self-awareness—especially when he appeared to disrespect the Saints’ defense before making his first start of the season.
People can disagree about that. But his conduct, including moments that have come across as arrogant, along with his play, may help explain why teams passed on him in the draft.
Consider the numbers cited here: among 42 eligible quarterbacks last season, Sanders ranked 41st in passer rating. He threw more interceptions than touchdowns and recorded the fifth-lowest QBR since the statistic was introduced in 2006. It was also the lowest QBR by a Browns quarterback with at least six starts in franchise history.
My criticism isn’t racism. I could explain why I think Watson is Cleveland’s best starting option, but that’s a subject for another time. My view comes from what I see on the field and what I hear from Sanders off it—impressions that, in some ways, seem to overlap with concerns voiced by NFL front offices and members of the media.
The numbers are there. Supporters, though, don’t always want to look at them.
