Now that the 2025 NFL Draft is over, the long national nightmare is over and Shedeur Sanders has been drafted. But before the Cleveland Browns took the former Colorado quarterback (and after it as well) ESPN analyst Mel Kiper was having several coniption fits that the NFL took so long. In the process, a former Notre Dame football quarterback got dragged into the kerfuffle and was catching some serious strays.
At issue was Kiper believing that he knew better than every team in the NFL how to evaluate quarterbacks. He became enraged after Sanders was drafted and screamed that the league is terrible at evaluating quarterbacks.
Mel Kiper’s Shedeur Sanders rage yanks Jimmy Clausen back into the spotlight
The problem, as social media users pointed out, is that Kiper has not always been great at evaluating quarterback prospects either. And former Notre Dame football QB Jimmy Clausen was Exhibit A.
Just a few examples of Mel Kiper evaluating Quarterbacks https://t.co/DlyfgGwk8R pic.twitter.com/rS88ylYsMd
— Shawn (@PalmerDesigns_) April 26, 2025
Clausen put together a heck of a final season in South Bend back in 2009, throwing for 3,722 yards and 28 touchdowns to just 4 interceptions. That led Kiper to believe he was the best signal caller in the 2010 NFL Draft.
The ESPN analyst was so sure of Clausen’s greatness that he actually hung his career on it. At that draft, as some others showed skepticism, Kiper said he would retire in eight years if the quarterback wasn’t a great NFL player.
Clausen’s career was in fact, not great. While he played in 13 games for the Carolina Panthers in his rookie season, he completed just 52.5% of his passes for 1,558 yards while throwing 3 touchdowns and 9 interceptions.
Clausen didn’t throw another pass in the NFL until 2014 when he appeared in 4 games for the Chicago Bears. He appeared in 4 total games again in 2015, between the Bears and the Baltimore Ravens. And then his career was over.
Unfortunately for the former Notre Dame football signal caller, he hasn’t really bothered anyone since his playing days ended. And yet, he saw his name dragged through the mud quite often on Saturday, thanks to Mel Kiper’s three-day freakout over Shedeur Sanders’ NFL evaluations not matching up with his. It was the very definition of catching strays.