Winter’s coming, and a frost covers many NFL quarterback rooms across the nation. The most valuable position in professional sports remains in incredibly high demand. Could the 2025 NFL Draft quell concerns and save jobs, or will it be an exercise in futility?
Younger quarterbacks have a shorter leash than ever. Young, raw prospects are being thrown to the wolves with a runway only the length of an NFL field, and oftentimes the landing gear is already malfunctioning and the plane’s body is covered in speed tape.
The league is caught in a pickle. They want the freaky one-of-one athlete with the big arm. They say they understand the development curve and will work with the player. But with jobs on the line and bosses demanding results on the field, development becomes secondary to saving one’s own behind.
So, we’ll be assigning polite recommendations for these quarterbacks with eligibility remaining along with explaining their current situation and NFL projection. But if anything is becoming clearer with quarterback transitions to the NFL, staying in school for as long as possible seems to be a good move for these young men.
10) Quinn Ewers, Texas
Texas won’t retain Arch Manning for another offseason with Quinn Ewers slotted in at QB1 for the Longhorns. The transfer portal is rife with dollar bills, and Manning’s name alone would bring more eyeballs and money to a program than anybody else in the portal’s short history.
Ewers, along with Manning and Vince Young, are the only three passers to ever hold a perfect composite rating at the quarterback position as recruits. That legend alone is likely what has kept his draft stock so prevalent to the masses. For those of us who ingest 5,000 calories’ worth of college football coach’s tape every day, nothing he’s done at Texas warrants first-round consideration.
Steve Sarkisian’s offense already tricked the league into selecting Mac Jones in the first round. It’s an efficiency-based attack that lives around the line of scrimmage utilizing formations, motions, and overwhelming speed and talent to topple defenses.
Unlike Jones, and unlike other names on this list, Ewers possesses the physical traits necessary to succeed at the NFL level. He’s flashed some impressive performances in the College Football Playoffs and against some of the team’s toughest regular season opponents.
However, his slight frame and three years’ worth of consistent nagging injuries cast doubt on his durability. His inconsistent-at-best deep ball has put an electronic limiter on some of the fastest football players on the planet vertically, and when he gets punched in the mouth early, it tends to show for the rest of the contest.
We’ve seen the likes of Joe Burrow and Jayden Daniels transfer and find lightning in a bottle under a new regime. That is the best we can hope for with Ewers at this moment.
9) Dillon Gabriel, Oregon
Finding names for the bottom of this top-10 list was like trying to get the last bit of raspberry jam out of the bottom of the jar with a knife. Just when you thought you had something, it slipped off the slide of the metal and slid back to the bottom of the jar.
Dillon Gabriel is almost certainly the biggest surprise on the list, but it’s for a very good reason. The potential 2025 class does not boast the Joe Milton III-esque athletes with huge arms that teams would like to develop in the shadows. We’re forced to look for potential career-long backups. But finding even that in this class is a fool’s errand.
Gabriel is a light in the darkness there. Oregon has found a way to extract the absolute best from the sixth-year senior. By the end of the season, he’ll surpass Bo Nix for the most starts in college football history at the position. He’s fleet-footed and shifty as a runner and boasts confidence pushing the ball over the middle while also flashing consistent anticipation and accuracy downfield along the sidelines.
So, what’s the catch? Well, there is a requisite level of arm talent necessary to survive in the NFL, and he’s teetering on that border if not walking right across it. He is also under six feet tall and probably only sniffs 200 pounds after eating an entire jar of peanut butter.
He’s maxed out. But with his experience, accuracy, anticipation, and running threat, there is a world where he comes into the mix as a Taylor Heinicke type that can help your team remain afloat while the starter misses a few weeks. The flashes won’t last, but they might keep a team in the playoff picture.
8) Kurtis Rourke, Indiana
Like Gabriel, Kurtis Rourke is limited to a point where ever becoming a starting quarterback at the NFL level is unlikely. But the veteran pocket passer from our neighbors to the north has the makings of a Mason Rudolph.
Making his mark at home & on the road. pic.twitter.com/1Ky7n8RGfI
— Indiana Football (@IndianaFootball) November 7, 2024
Like Rudolph, Rourke is a big-bodied quarterback with a lot of experience and production at the college level. He’s a load to try and bring down for would-be tacklers in the pocket unable to hit him squarely, and he’s adept at both avoiding turnover-worthy plays and avoiding unnecessary sacks. Those are two critical traits for an NFL backup to possess.
Although the league has shifted toward more mobile QBs, the pocket passer still exists and even thrives at the NFL level. However, as is the case with Rudolph, a big frame doesn’t necessarily equal big-arm talent. Rourke’s arm moves in slow motion, and his overall lack of flexibility and velocity negatively impacts his upside at the next level.
7) Carson Beck, Georgia
Carson Beck is one of the most interesting cases in recent memory. We saw Jameis Winston and Trevor Lawrence burst onto the scene as freshmen and then fizzle just a bit over the subsequent seasons, but they still had the talent and production to command top draft capital.
Beck’s 2024 campaign has been a speed run from QB1 to practically undraftable in a way that nobody could have imagined.
He was already somewhat of a default QB1. Cam Ward was the toolsy transfer we needed to see growth from, and we wanted to see how Shedeur Sanders managed the Big 12. But like Lawrence, Beck did a lot of the innate quarterback things at a level that made him an elevated bus-driver type.
But he went off the rails and went crashing into the station. It’s as if he read everyone’s reports on his lackluster playmaking prowess and limited ceiling and said, “I’ll show them.” It’s an eerily similar on-field situation to Mac Jones at Alabama versus New England. They’re writing checks that their arms and legs can’t physically cash.
But if it was only a case of physical errors leading to mistakes, we could maybe ease Beck back into managing the game while slightly elevating those around them. But he’s completely lost confidence in what once looked like a solid pre- and post-snap process. He’s losing middle-of-the-field defenders and testing non-existent windows at an unsustainable rate.
Beck still has that 2023 form locked away somewhere. He could still round into a good but not great starter at the NFL level. That’s a realistic goal to set for the Georgia QB. But he needs a full mental reset to get his body back on track.
6) Riley Leonard, Notre Dame
It is sometimes easy and lazy to make player comparisons between guys who have similar builds and went to the same schools. But has anybody ever seen Daniel Jones and Riley Leonard in the same room together?
Jones obviously hasn’t progressed into a legitimate NFL starter, even if the New York Giants paid him handsomely at the end of his rookie deal. But Jones also isn’t a complete dumpster fire, either.
Leonard’s game is suspiciously similar to Jones’. Jones is a bit taller with a few more pounds on his frame, but both players carry the title of “sneaky athletic.” In fact, they’re probably most dangerous when using their legs instead of their arms.
That stems from each passer’s unwillingness to push the ball to the intermediate and deep areas of the field with any sort of consistency whatsoever. NFL starters can’t sustain serviceability by dinking and dunking their way down the field. With the disparity between offensive and defensive line play in the league, it’s too difficult to continuously sustain long drives.
Explosive plays are paramount, and Leonard’s lack of downfield placement and flat-out unwillingness to take shots outside of obvious shot-play calls leaves him toward the bottom of the list for completions of 20+ air yards (eight). Only Ewers (six) on this list has fewer.
Additionally, despite his 21 attempts ranking ninth on the list, his three turnover-worthy throws are also tied for the most on the list. It’s as if he’s chucking it downfield on occasion simply to avoid an outrageously low aDOT.
However, his quick-game process is fine. He doesn’t put the ball at risk very often outside of unnecessary downfield shots, and his athleticism adds a gap to defend in the run game. Like Jones, he likely never finds the killer instinct necessary for starting success at the next level, but he could be a dangerous spot starter and solid backup option for teams with mobile starting quarterbacks.
5) Garrett Nussmeier, LSU
Garrett Nussmeier isn’t far off from being a QB1 candidate in the 2025 NFL Draft class. However, I employ a numerical grading scale I concocted a few years ago to give a balanced, unbiased value for a player.
Your heart can tell you “This guy has QB1 potential. He’s got a bit of Romo in him. He’s mobile enough to create as a passer, and he possesses a big-time arm that’s only gotten more consistent when operating on the run as the season wears on.”
However, that would be willfully ignoring the rate at which he puts the ball at risk. His processing flashes are impressive, but his lapses are devastating. More time under center at the college level could help iron out some of his post-snap issues with secondary rotations and bait coverage keys.
But it would also willfully ignore something that isn’t being discussed enough … he’s small. Nussmeier is listed at 6’2″, 200 pounds. While size is a small part of my grading scale, it ends up being the difference between Nussmeier and the next two players on the list.
This means the race for QB3 is a very tight battle. In the end, all three of these potential QB prospects should probably return to school. However, the deciding factor between the three could come down to what a coaching staff values most, as they are three very different players.
4) Jalen Milroe, Alabama
Things have gone awry for Jalen Milroe and the Alabama Crimson Tide after their dominating performance against Georgia. Milroe actually played incredibly well against Vanderbilt, but a bad-luck interception and loss made that performance look bad when it was the opposite.
Since then, however, things have been very ugly. His accuracy has fallen off a cliff and the confidence he was showing post-snap has disappeared. Those two things could be connected. Either way, it’s been ugly enough that he’s probably tanked whatever draft stock he’d been building previously.
He still has a lot to learn when navigating pressure, and he needs a mechanical overhaul if he ever wants to become a consistent downfield passer. But Milroe has a trump card that makes him an enticing prospect and one that elevates him in my rankings. He’s built like a truck, he explodes through rushing lanes like he’s Jahmyr Gibbs, and he has legitimate running back vision.
Like Anthony Richardson, the passing floor could be very low, but his legs alone are enough to make an offense incredibly dangerous even if they fall in the bottom third of the league in passing efficiency.
In the end, he should return to school and work specifically on the flexibility in his arm and his throwing motion on downfield attempts in particular. Milroe has the arm to generate real RPMs, but he needs to loosen things up to unlock that potential.
3) Drew Allar, Penn State
Everyone who says that a good rushing attack makes passing the ball easier hasn’t watched a lick of Penn State football over the past two seasons. The two-headed monster of Nicholas Singleton and Kaytron Allen should make Drew Allar‘s job simple. Guys should be running free!
Nope! Tyler Warren is one of the most dangerous weapons in college football, but he is their only legitimate threat outside of the rushing attack, which he also boosts when put in position to take snaps in the wildcat as a former high school quarterback.
Allar has the prototypical NFL size and arm talent. The ball explodes out of his hands effortlessly, and his arm is flexible and reliable even on the move. He’s far from a great athlete for the position, but like Rourke, he’s a sturdy player in the pocket who can pick up yards on the ground when he absolutely has to.
Unfortunately, the lack of speed, agility, route running, and general overall talent at wide receiver prevents him from displaying all of his natural physical ability. He has the same number of downfield attempts (21) as Leonard. Ward, Beck, and Sanders have all at least doubled that total in 2024.
Unlike Leonard, whose offense doesn’t even try to push the ball, Penn State tries but can’t because their receivers can’t sniff separation or threaten the defense vertically at all.
Allar should return to school. In a perfect world, he would transfer somewhere that could facilitate his growth as a downfield passer.
2) Cam Ward, Miami (FL)
The Cam Ward hype has been swirling since we first caught word about him transferring to Washington State. He may not be the prototypical height, but he’s certainly not short nor does he suffer from undereating. His lower-half thickness has gotten him out of quite a few pickles in the pocket throughout his career.
Ward also possesses what can only be described as a rocket launcher (wire-guided) attached to his right shoulder, and the explosiveness and elusiveness to be a threat on the ground. He’s not necessarily a creative runner with make-you-miss potential like Daniels or Lamar Jackson, but he’s still a danger whenever teams decide to play man coverage.
So, what’s the catch?
Everything that makes a quarterback project cleanly to the next level. His outrageous physical gifts are the only thing keeping his stock as high as it is. Once again, Ward lit up college football before conference play and has seen a regression as the season progressed.
Just some more Cam Ward magic for your timeline 🪄
📺: ABC #GoCanes | #HE1SMAN pic.twitter.com/OpPUUF7iQX
— Miami Hurricanes Football (@CanesFootball) November 2, 2024
Once again, he is putting the ball at risk often. Only Ewers and Beck have a higher turnover-worthy-play rate in 2024, and after boasting a solid pressure-to-sack ratio early in the year, Ward’s rate has spiked back above 20% since Week 5.
Ward is a highlight reel waiting to happen. There will be three, four, five, or six plays a game that maybe only five humans in the world could make. But as we quickly and painfully learned with Zach Wilson, those highlights and 50/50 balls aren’t a sustainable formula for success in the NFL.
One must be able to operate within structure and on an NFL timeline. Ward won’t have four seconds to work in an NFL pocket. NFL teams can’t lean on RPOs, screens, and tendency breakers alone. A passer must cleanly operate the quick game (think of Justin Fields’ issues here).
The best-case scenario for Ward is the New York Jets as their roster is currently constructed. It would likely take Joe Douglas losing his job for Ward to be a legitimate target for New York in the draft. However, Aaron Rodgers has another year left on his deal. But more importantly, so does Tyrod Taylor.
Rodgers can darkness-retreat himself away from the rookie and never provide an ounce of insight. Having Taylor in the building could be massive for Ward’s development into a pro passer. But playing him immediately will likely magnify his bad habits because they’re what he falls back on for success naturally in college.
None of this takes away his Heisman-caliber performance this season. He’s the most exciting and productive QB in the nation. He is the sole reason that the Miami team is undefeated, and he’s also a big reason why they’ve had to claw back in games against Virginia Tech and California.
Ward has all the potential in the world to be a difference-maker in the NFL, but he needs a long runway to realize that potential.
1) Shedeur Sanders, Colorado
Shedeur Sanders was QB1 in my heart and with my eyes, and the grading scale confirmed those priors. You have to love it when a plan comes together! However, the grade did not come with a Round 1 designation.
Note: Nix, J.J. McCarthy, and Michael Penix Jr. all carried second-round grades last cycle. The grade alone is not an indication of when a QB will be selected. There is a chance that Sanders is the 1.01 off the board in April, and although it’s not ideal, it’s understandable … as long as a team doesn’t mortgage their entire future for that pick on top of it, à la Carolina just two drafts ago.
Sanders is the most naturally accurate passer in the class. He’s practically automatic when he’s able to work in rhythm. His quick, compact release makes up for what is just a slightly above-average arm. His anticipatory flashes are impressive, he operates cleanly over the middle of the field, and he consistently exhibits toughness in the face of free rushers (which happens a lot.)
The pressure-to-sack (P2S) rate has been a strong indicator of a passer’s ability to work within structure, play on time, and avoid unnecessary negative plays. However, each situation must be evaluated independently.
For two years now Sanders has had a P2S rate of over 20%, which is worryingly high. While there is no denying the fact that he enjoys allowing intermediate concepts to develop in the dropback game, forcing him to hold the ball for a while, he’s also been playing behind arguably the worst Power Five, and now Power Four, offensive line in the nation.
In other words, Sanders has already lived under the pressure of an NFL timeline for multiple years now. He’s already learned how to see things within 2.5 seconds. The process certainly isn’t perfect, but it’s like having a coloring book with the pictures already outlined for the artist.
Sanders also isn’t a perfectly refined processor either. He’s prone to getting stuck on his initial read. While he’s shown more creativity as a passer in 2024, he doesn’t have the same playmaking gene that Ward, Nussmeier, or even Gabriel possess, which limits his ceiling a bit.
His willingness to take unnecessary hits remains a worry. If anybody talks about him being a dual-threat or mobile quarterback, immediately delete that person from your Rolodex of football minds. Sanders’ mobility is akin to Geno Smith or C.J. Stroud at best. He can scramble and he can escape pressure, but he’s not what anyone should describe as a dual-threat or a consistent danger as a runner.
In other words, you’re either betting big on Ward’s potential but far-away upside or you’re betting on what feels like the more sure-fire NFL starter in Sanders.