Agent Leigh Steinberg returns post-NFL Draft to discuss the “fall” of Shedeur Sanders, why teams fall in love with quarterbacks and a wide-ranging visit with Nestor about the absolute realities of NIL money and young athletes in modern sports.
Leigh Steinberg discussed the unexpected fall of quarterback Shadeur Sanders in the NFL Draft, noting the high expectations and the lack of a “love affair” with a team. He highlighted the unpredictability of draft outcomes, citing past examples like Rob Johnson and Patrick Mahomes. Steinberg also addressed the issue of concussions in football, mentioning his efforts through the Lee Steinberg Concussion Foundation and advancements in treatments like rTMS and neurofeedback. He criticized the NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) phenomenon for disrupting college football recruiting and creating chaos in the transfer portal. Steinberg also touched on the challenges of representing young athletes in the modern sports landscape.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
NFL Draft, Shadeur Sanders, concussions, Lee Steinberg, quarterback scouting, draft expectations, player representation, brain injury, neuroplasticity, rTMS, neurofeedback, NIL (Name, Image, Likeness), transfer portal, Cleveland Browns, Patrick Mahomes.
SPEAKERS
8
Leigh Steinberg, Nestor Aparicio
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T, A, F, 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive. We are taking the Maryland crab cake tour back out on the road. I will have these Back to the Future scratch offs to give away. On Wednesday, we’re going to be at a red brick station pouring some beers and cheers, and hopefully some more cheers on the baseball field. This guy’s a football guy, but he does love the Dodgers, and we went down that road last time, but we’re gonna stay on the gridiron that he was made famous as one of the characters for Jerry Maguire, and certainly has lived a long life of quarterbacks and representation in many, ways, and the shador Sanders thing. Lee Steinberg joins us here. One of our defending champions comes on a couple times a year, and I try to get you on like in the season, there’s always some Lamar thing or a Patrick mahomes thing on your end. But I didn’t think we’d be talking about shador Sanders in this way. And certainly going back to your ERA in the beginning, and Dion and all of that, this has been an unprecedented story, hasn’t it? Lee,
Leigh Steinberg 01:03
well, it was a precipitous fall from grace, but the first premise was that he was going to be a top five pick, and if the expectations are with that, then they certainly chronicled his slip to the fifth round on the ESPN and NFL Network News is and that’s uncomfortable. Draft time. It’s not real time. It’s water torture time. Every second seems like a minute when you’re waiting, and every minute seems like an hour. And so it was a difficult situation, but the expectations were set so high. The way scouting works is that to get someone drafted as a franchise quarterback, there has to be a love affair that occurs between an individual franchise and the player, and it doesn’t seem like he found a team. As you went through in the first round, New Orleans and Cleveland and Pittsburgh and New York Giants, those people that had a need didn’t seem to be focused on Him. And so you go back and look at the scouting system, and some of it happens in the one on one meetings that teams have with players at the combine. And evidently, and I don’t know this to be true, but, but I’ve been told that that process, the one on one meetings, didn’t go all that particularly well. We usually bring in a retired general manager to prep the players and prepare them as they’re going through scouting for those interviews, because they can be critical, and you needed one of those teams to step forward, and once they don’t, because on draft day, I can tell you with reasonable certainty where a client I have is going to be drafted, because teams are pretty open in saying, We want him. We’re going to take him. If we come to the 12th pick, look out for us to take him, and that just didn’t happen.
Nestor Aparicio 03:24
I was about to the next question is, nobody’s been at this longer than you had Chad whistling on recently here this week, he represents Josh Jacobs. He’s a buddy of mine. Lives in Baltimore, and he said, I have a couple kids. I sort of know where they’re going to go. All of you sort of have an idea, but, but you get shocked too, right? I mean, I I’m sure somewhere in your book, there’s a time where you got it really right, really wrong in some way, but, um, it feels like everybody got this wrong in some way. And it felt like it went to personality, certainly, I guess, not race at this point in the game. But who knows. But there was something about this that sort of shocked everyone that it became an all night story on Friday and an all morning story Saturday, up until when it happens. And obviously, his father’s one of the most famous athletes in, you know, in modern sports
8Leigh Steinberg 04:14
and and his father’s been a real credit to the game, and his father has been a sensational coach, and his father is one of the greatest players of all time. So that would lead you to believe that if he comes out of that nurturing set, that he’s got the fundamental values that he needs to go ahead. I know he did a quote where he said, I want to go to a team that builds everything around me. Was that perceived as arrogant? Was he perceived as arrogant? Who knows. But what didn’t happen was that 101, and when you say, Have I been surprised? Yes, but here’s how I’ve been surprised. So it’s 1995 Rob Johnson is going through scouting a quarterback, and I find two teams that really love him. One is Buffalo, and the other is the Jacksonville Jaguars. And Jacksonville Jaguars make a trade for Mark Burnell a week before the draft, so that wipes out his first round possibilities. So then we come up to Buffalo on the second round, and they take another quarterback. I know in my mind, I can’t find another team that’s that excited about him, other than Jacksonville. And as it turns out, he goes to Jacksonville as the first pick of round one. So when you say, have, I’ve been surprised, yes, but not with the teams that have the most interest, because that’s evident to you if you’re taking a player through scouting. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 05:51
I mean, I’ve been at this a long time too, I guess going back in the John Elway news this week, but the Baltimore connection, if he was undisputed number one, everybody knew he was number one. There was the year there was Manning and leaf a little bit. But your guy in recent times, mahomes, not a number ones. Teams passed. Other teams had quarterbacks. Situationally. Did you know he was going to Kansas City a week before, a month before? Not at all. Maybe somebody traded up ahead. I mean, because he’s going to the Hall of Fame, of all Hall of Fames, and he’s your guy.
Leigh Steinberg 06:21
And but again, in those discussions, it became very clear that Kansas City had intense interest in them. They were picking 26 so they wouldn’t have to trade up the other two teams that told us that they had intense interest were to take him. Were sitting in 11 and 12 that draft, and they were the New Orleans Saints and the Houston Texans. And so did I know? I knew that he would never get past those two teams. And then Kansas City traded over and above and got in position to take him. So my level of information not to be arrogant, but teams want to make sure everything’s going to be smooth on draft day, as long as I don’t cross fertilize the information that teams are giving me, it’s pretty accurate, and teams are not shy about it. Now, they don’t say that publicly. Nestor. Matter of fact, I’ve told you before that there’s a generalized amnesty online for general managers in the weeks approaching the draft. You know, that’s what I
Nestor Aparicio 07:33
8was gonna ask you. I mean, where is the level of trust in, you know, in a game of it’s a shell game amongst 32 people in you right? Not
Leigh Steinberg 07:41
publicly. No team wants to broadcast what their draft intentions are before the draft, so you can’t trust any of that publicly, but privately behind the scenes. What I’m telling you is that teams will be honest about what they’re going to do when you have a strong sense. I’ll give you another example of how this works. So I had a client, Derek Gilbert, back in 2014 and he’s coming at SMU as a quarterback, and the team that loved him was the Oakland Raiders, and the other team was the LA Rams. So we go to the second round, and that’s the logical place for Garrett to be picked by the Raiders. And guess what? Their car slips. So that’s unexpected. He slips in the second round. So no Garrett in the second round, but as it turns out, in the sixth round, the Rams take him. So it comes down to teams and understanding their what their actual intention is. And I’m telling you, if you represent players, you should know that stuff preparing a player for Draft Day.
Nestor Aparicio 08:53
Lee Steinberg is our guest, the man, the myth, the legend. He’s gonna talk some concussions here in a couple minutes, but I do want to talk about the Cleveland logjam at quarterback and what happens from an agent’s side. When Joe Flacco, is a friend of mine, took the gig there, thought he’s there, they have Deshaun Watson. They have quite a room. And I’m sure that it comes back to the agent to say, get me out of here. Get me a better situation, or, in your case, concern for your client, if that, you know, with all the moving chairs in the league, and that’s really what the agents of that that that’s your your role and your value to someone is put them in the best position.
Leigh Steinberg 09:28
So if you’re representing Joe Flacco, everything’s fine, because at worst, he’ll be the mentor for those younger players. And that’s a good situation that the younger players learn from Flacco, who’s got extensive experience. Can he pick it didn’t make it in Pittsburgh, so sort of wondering if they had confidence in him. How did they pick two quarterbacks? Later, here’s the point. Should your Sanders be spectacular? Or if he’s really good, could win that job in the same way that the Atlanta Falcons last year make a draft pick at quarterback. They’ve already got Kirk Cousins, but the younger quarterback so good, he ends up the starter. So it would not blow me away if in the second year Sanders takes that starting job.
8Nestor Aparicio 10:23
Lee, you’re working a whole bunch of things. I mean, you’re always teaching writing, traveling around. I see you doing symposiums in all sorts of way, especially in your own space, with agents and educating young agents. But concussions on your mind and for clients of yours, people, you know, I’m always I have the CTE concerns of you know, folks my age, who played 30 years ago, who who have these issues as they get a little bit older, where is the legal and all this? Because I think anyone very visually, just as a fan watching, you see all the different helmet types now, and so you see that there’s being science and there’s being an election process in the play or not. Hey, here’s your helmet. Wear it, but, but protecting the head. The league is legislated this fine. This tried the referee, this trying to keep the game safer. And I do believe the game is safer. I believe they’re trying. I don’t believe it’s a safe game, but tell me where we are in concussion in 2025 Lee, well,
Leigh Steinberg 11:23
first of all, concussions dropped for the first time in a long time, but I had a crisis of conscience back in the 1980s because I’m representing half the starting quarterbacks, they kept getting hit in the head, and we would go to doctors and ask, how many is too many. When should we contemplate retirement? And they had no answer. So I started holding concussion conferences in 1994 and got the players together in a way where Troy Aikman, Steve Young, Warren Moon Drew Bledsoe, all of them heard from neurologists. And we’ve continued doing this, we’ve had about 25 concussion conferences. The good news today is and I just created a the Lee cyber concussion foundation to raise money for more research, treat underserved communities and advance the knowledge that we have. Here’s the good news. There is a theory called neuroplasticity, and where we always assume that the brain would only descend into worse and worse circumstances. Today, we can rehabilitate a concussed brain through a couple processes. One’s called rTMS, which is magnets against the brain, and the other is neurofeedback, and both of them have been able to restore some of the synapses to health and do well. So how are we doing? Still not a safe game, but we’re doing better well,
Nestor Aparicio 13:01
and I would think for you, back in 1994 and we’re going back 31 years here, and you mentioned Troy Aikman and some of your clients that I know. I remember those concussions. I remember those hits. I remember the late hits. I remember all of that, um, such a brutal game, but, but at that point, there wasn’t a lot of science on this, right? Lee, I mean, even when I started doing Super Bowls back in the 90s, I would have doctors and different patients and different people coming before it was identified as CTE in any way. But I think the repetitive brain injury part of football, I don’t know where else in life you would have that kind of trauma again and again. And I know loud things and in different places, airplanes and different things like that, where the sound and the vibration would be like that, but there wasn’t a lot of science, real science on this prior to the being football science. Am I correct?
Leigh Steinberg 13:56
8Yes, and that’s what inspired it. As I said, we went to doctors and ask them, How many is too many? What are the long term effects? They have no answers. So the point is, the brain is the last frontier of medical research, and we know in the last 20 years about 10 times what was ever understood about brain function before that. So this is all new science, and we’re understanding it better, and we’ve got ways to to treat a concussed brain that just didn’t exist before. What do you want
Nestor Aparicio 14:31
me to send people to get some information on that Lee, if they want to read up on that?
Leigh Steinberg 14:35
Lee Steinberg foundation.org, and we have a number of iconic players, including Ray Lewis on the sitting on the athletic advisory board. We have 13 doctors, so we’re hoping to make an impact.
Nestor Aparicio 14:52
Well, it’s always pleasure to spend a little bit time with you off season. In season, it was a strange trip. So your practice at. This point and players and obviously leads with Patrick mahomes, but he’s not your only client, right? You’re real busy this time of year, right?
8Leigh Steinberg 15:07
Yeah, we have about, I’m co represent about 13 clients still and but I gotta tell you, Nestor, the n, i l explosion has seriously put a body blow to the way I did business all those years, because now you have a 15 year old quarterback trying to market himself and hiring a marketing agent, and I would have a difficult time talking about role modeling and second career and health and wellness with a 15 year old well,
Nestor Aparicio 15:44
and I, I’m hearing that from everyone I’m here. You know dear friend of mine I coached is, is a college basketball scout and a coach, and it’s turned the world upside down. And it really came back to shooter Sanders a little bit to say that when a kid’s got a whole bunch of money coming into the league, there’s a different level of even if they have rich parents, to some degree, what you’re dealing with for their earning potential, and you representing them. Am I correct in saying that?
Leigh Steinberg 16:10
So just remember this, the top quarterback in this draft, in this high school recruiting process, committed to LSU, and allegedly he got $4 million in guarantees in nil, along came a rich Michigan alum and offered him $14 million and he decommitted to LSU and enrolled in Michigan. So that’s where we are. We’re with four conferences that will sign all the good high school to college players, and everyone else will be left in the background, because those schools, like Ohio State nil fueled their national championship. And the second thing is the transfer portal. So it’s created an anarchy because bigger schools recruit players from smaller schools mid career now, and all you have to do is see what happened at Tennessee, right? Their quarterback sat out of spring ball because he didn’t like his Nils went in a transfer portal to UCLA. UCLA is backup quarterback, transferred to Tennessee, and we’ve got chaos.
Nestor Aparicio 17:35
Ah, at least we have the NFL too. It never goes away. Schedule days coming on the 14th. So we got all that going on. Lee Steinberg, agent to the stars end up. Patrick mahomes and friend of mine and never shy about coming on and telling me how it is, trying to educate our audience tonight, I appreciate that there’s some honor amongst the thieves amongst you in the NFL, you know, on draft weekend, but it is fun how it plays out. It was really nice seeing it in Green Bay. Lee. I will chat with you at some point later on in the summer. We’ll see how that Dodgers Orioles things go. I don’t want to talk any baseball with you here right now. It’s been a bad little start to the baseball season. Nearly it’s early. It’s getting early late as Yogi would say, I am Nestor. We are wnst. Am 1570 Towson, Baltimore, and we never stop talking Baltimore. Positive. You.
