It’s been quite the offseason and introduction to the NFL for the rookie quarterback. He experienced one of the more shocking draft falls in recent memory, dropping all the way to the fifth round after being considered a first-round prospect by analysts.
Since being picked by the Cleveland Browns, Sanders has done just about everything right – until he picked up a pair of speeding tickets in June.
The rookie addressed those incidents at training camp on Friday, saying he learned his lesson.
‘Yeah, I definitely learned not to drive fast at all,’ Sanders said, via the Akron Beacon Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network. ‘So I really don’t even drive that much anymore. But I really don’t drive fast at all. So I definitely follow the rules and I hope everybody learned from my situation, you know that not drive fast at all.’
The first citation came on June 5 in Brunswick, Ohio, when Sanders was ticketed for driving 91 mph in a 65 mph speed limit zone. The second was for driving 101 mph in a 60 mph speed limit zone on June 17 in Strongsville, Ohio.
He later paid both tickets, settling the cases.
It’s not the first time Sanders discussed the speeding tickets, but it may have been the more stern of his admission. In June, at David Njoku’s celebrity softball game, Sanders gave a brief assessment of the tickets.
“I’ve made some wrong choices,” Sanders said with a laugh. “I gotta own up to them. … I learn from them.”
Fair or not, the tickets may have highlighted issues that some team executives had with selecting the quarterback. A league decision-maker told USA TODAY Sports’ Jarrett Bell in May that Sanders’ flashy persona and leadership style were a concern.
That takes the attention off things like his decision to work out with high school students during his early days in Cleveland after the draft.
Sanders is no stranger to the spotlight, however. The son of NFL Hall of Famer, Deion Sanders, the quarterback has been living life under a microscope for years. Playing the most important position in sports and doing so in college for his father’s teams at Jackson State and Colorado only magnified everything.
The 23-year-old will look to put the situation behind him now and return everyone’s attention to what he can do on the field.
It might’ve been a costly lesson for Sanders, but it could’ve been much worse.