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It’s been hard to ignore the writing on the wall concerning the seemingly imminent demise of the NFL Combine courtesy of players who’ve realized it has the potential to do more harm than good when it comes to impacting their draft stock. However, Deion Sanders was pretty ahead of the curve based on how he approached the showcase after leaving Florida State.
The man known as “Prime Time” is one of a handful of people who’ve been able to balance a career in the NFL and MLB, and he’d already signed a contract with the New York Yankees by the time he started gearing up to take his football talents to the next level.
Sanders was a two-time All-American and won the Jim Thorpe Award (the trophy presented to the best defensive back in the country) as a member of the Seminoles, and the combination of his skills at cornerback and the eye-popping speed and agility that made him an equally impressive kick returner meant he was one of the most highly-touted prospects heading into the 1989 NFL Draft.
At the time, the NFL Combine wasn’t the spectacle it became after it was televised for the first time in 2004, and while teams obviously used it to evaluate rising college football players, many of those athletes declined to participate in a number of drills—including the 4o-yard dash.
Sanders initially hinted he might just show up for a physical before heading home, although he ended up running a 40-yard dash that’s become the stuff of legend and meeting with a number of teams—including one franchise that had a pretty awkward meeting with a player it never came close to scooping up.
Why Deion Sanders walked out of a meeting with the Giants at the NFL Combine
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The NFL Combine gives teams a chance to not only evaluate the physical prowess of prospective draft picks but also grants them the opportunity to get some insight into how they approach the game from a mental aspect while keeping an eye out for potential red flags on the psychological front.
However, there are a ton of stories about scouts and front-office executives who’ve harnessed some fairly unconventional strategies and questions to see how players react under pressure or when caught off guard, which has led to the league putting rules in place that ban the discussion of potentially incendiary topics.
The Giants didn’t go that particular route when they met with Sanders at the combine, although New York GM George Young (a major proponent of the controversial Wonderlic test) made every player the team sat down with complete a written mental evaluation that took around two hours to complete.
In 2017, Sanders recalled what unfolded when the Giants presented him with that test, saying:
“They sat me down and gave me a thick book. I mean, this thing was thicker than a phone book.
I said, ‘What’s this?’ They said, ‘This is our test that we give all the players.’ I said, ‘Excuse me, what pick do you have in the draft?’ They said 18th.
I said, ‘I’ll be gone before then. I’ll see y’all later. I ain’t got time for this.’”
It’s hard to blame him when you consider the Falcons ended up picking him with the fifth overall pick behind Troy Aikman, Barry Sanders, and Derrick Thomas (Tony Mandarich, who was selected by the Packers with the second pick, was the only person in the top five who wasn’t eventually inducted in the Pro Football Hall of Fame).
Deion’s cockiness has a tendency to rub plenty of people the wrong way, but it’s hard to blame him for talking the talk when he was able to walk the walk when everything was said and done.