It’s change into clear that scouts only view two quarterbacks on this 12 months’s draft class as elite prospects: Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders and Miami’s Cam Ward. While it’s almost certain that each players can be taking the following step to the NFL following this faculty football season, Sanders just about made it official, this week by accepting an invitation to play within the East-West Shrine Bowl this winter.
Sanders has been considered one of two leaders on an electrical Buffalos team that remains to be within the running for the Big 12 championship and a spot within the College Football Playoff. Sanders ranks sixth within the FBS with 322.2 passing yards per game and is tied for second with 27 passing touchdowns, adding 4 scores on the bottom. He has a likelihood to finish the season with a bang by rattling off some wins here to shut out 2024 and proceed elevating his stock within the 2025 NFL Draft.
Ward is correct up there with Sanders. He leads the FBS in each passing yards (3,409) and passing touchdowns (32) and has 4 additional scrimmage touchdowns of his own (three on the bottom and one receiving). He’s led the Hurricanes to a 9-1 record through 10 games, and like Colorado, Miami is in position to look of their conference title game and secure a spot within the 12-team playoff.
Past Sanders and Ward, though, experts view 2025’s quarterbacks class as fairly barren. In a discussion with Brock Huard of FOX Sports and Steve Serby of the Recent York Post, ESPN’s Matt Miller that “it’s Shedeur 1…Cam 2, after which…there’s a little bit of a niche between (them and) the following crop of quarterbacks,” including guys like Carson Beck of Georgia, Quinn Ewers of Texas, and Jaxson Dart of Ole Miss.
Miller sees Sanders and Ward because the only two likely first-round picks in the category of passers. He projects Beck, Ewers, Penn State’s Drew Allar, Alabama’s Jalen Milroe, and LSU’s Garrett Nussmeier as potential mid- to late-round projects but goes to this point as to suggest that Milroe and Nussmeier return for an additional 12 months of development within the SEC.
Regardless that Sanders and Ward are seen as clear favorites and leaders of this class, Miller speculated where the 2 would fall in last 12 months’s draft class in a discussion with one other NYP author, Ryan Dunleavy. Miller claimed that, despite Sander’s “surgical” accuracy and Ward’s “ability to dial up velocity like crazy,” each fall lower than the primary 4 quarterbacks taken last 12 months, Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels, Drake Maye, and J.J. McCarthy. He believes they compare more favorably with the opposite two first-round passers taken last 12 months, Michael Penix and Bo Nix.
Simply because he views Sanders and Ward more within the realm of Penix and Nix, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be drafted within the 8 to 12 range like those two were. Teams in need of a brand new, young passer don’t have the posh to attend around that long and hope that nobody trades ahead or takes a flyer on their future franchise arm. A QB-need tends to make NFL teams antsy, often forcing them to overvalue a passer past their value.
There’s plenty left to be seen through the rest of the faculty season, conference championships, and the College Football Playoff. Following that can be prospect games, just like the Senior Bowl and East-West Shrine Bowl, the NFL Scouting Mix, and every school’s pro day. Who knows? Possibly we’ll even see Sanders for the West suiting up against Ward for the East in Frisco, TX, this winter. Until then, each quarterbacks still have lots to prove with a purpose to hear their names called early on the primary night of the draft.
