Peter King has covered the National Football League since he began with the Cincinnati Enquirer in 1980, and he has enjoyed watching the league from afar since he announced his retirement in February of 2024. Currently, King is working on his new memoir, which explores his legendary career and examines how the NFL has changed since he first began covering the league.
Recently, he was a guest on the Sports Media Podcast with Richard Deitsch of The Athletic in a wide-ranging interview. During the conversation, he was asked about his opinion on how ESPN and Mel Kiper Jr. handled the storyline of Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders and his slip into the fifth round of the draft.
“I thought it was way over the top,” said King. “I would say there was probably four or five times that Mel got on his high horse about Shedeur Sanders. I might be wrong. Maybe it was three but seemed like it was more than three. ESPN started the draft on Thursday night, talking about Shedeur probably as much as Cam Ward, if not more. Shedeur wasn’t the pick, Cam Ward was the pick.”
Furthermore, he noted that Kiper, along with other pundits during the draft broadcast, could have contacted general managers or head coaches who continued to pass on selecting Sanders and asked for some sort of information on background. Moreover, the longtime NFL scribe was critical of some of the commentary surrounding why Shedeur wasn’t drafted as high as many had expected.
“Forget all these people who say, ‘Oh, it’s either it’s racist or anti-Deion.’ This is an anti-Deion. That’s a ridiculous statement,” King stated. “It’s so oversimplification of this. It is the fact that this guy had a bunch of job interviews that, at best, went in a shaky manner. Teams in the NFL, when you’re talking about a quarterback, they don’t like that.”
Later in the podcast, Deitsch asked King if he believed Kiper is better served being correct with his picks or being more of an entertainer with his presentation. Although King said he couldn’t answer that question definitively, he did express the belief that it probably would be better served if Kiper leaned more into being entertaining than being right.
“ESPN got the ratings,” said King. “ESPN accomplished what it wanted to do. It made Shedeur a huge story. He was a big story already, and this made it huge.”
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