It’s develop into clear that scouts view solely two quarterbacks on this 12 months’s draft class as elite prospects: Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders and Miami’s Cam Ward. Whereas it’s virtually sure that each gamers might be taking the subsequent step to the NFL following this school soccer 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 one in all two leaders on an electrical Buffalos workforce that’s nonetheless within the working for the Huge 12 championship and a spot within the School Soccer Playoff. Sanders ranks sixth within the FBS with 322.2 passing yards per sport and is tied for second with 27 passing touchdowns, including 4 scores on the bottom. He has an opportunity to finish the season with a bang by rattling off some wins right here to shut out 2024 and proceed elevating his inventory within the 2025 NFL Draft.
Ward is true up there with Sanders. He leads the FBS in each passing yards (3,409) and passing touchdowns (32) and has 4 further scrimmage touchdowns of his personal (three on the bottom and one receiving). He’s led the Hurricanes to a 9-1 document via 10 video games, and like Colorado, Miami is in place to seem in its convention title sport and safe a spot within the 12-team playoff.
Previous Sanders and Ward, although, specialists view 2025’s quarterback class as pretty barren. In a dialogue with Brock Huard of Fox Sports activities and Steve Serby of the New York Publish, ESPN’s Matt Miller mentioned that “it’s Shedeur 1…Cam 2, after which…there’s a little bit of a spot between (them and) the subsequent crop of quarterbacks,” together with guys like Carson Beck of Georgia, Quinn Ewers of Texas and Jaxson Dart of Ole Miss.
Miller sees Sanders and Ward as the one two doubtless first-round picks within the class of passers. He tasks Beck, Ewers, Penn State’s Drew Allar, Alabama’s Jalen Milroe and LSU’s Garrett Nussmeier as potential mid- to late-round tasks however goes as far as to recommend that Milroe and Nussmeier return for one more 12 months of improvement within the SEC.
Regardless that Sanders and Ward are seen as clear favorites and leaders of this class, Miller speculated the place the 2 would fall in final 12 months’s draft class in a dialogue with one other NYP author, Ryan Dunleavy. Miller claimed that, regardless of Sander’s “surgical” accuracy and Ward’s “capacity to dial up velocity like loopy,” each fall decrease than the primary 4 quarterbacks taken final 12 months, Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels, Drake Maye and J.J. McCarthy. He believes they examine extra favorably with the opposite two first-round passers taken final 12 months, Michael Penix and Bo Nix.
Simply because he views Sanders and Ward extra within the realm of Penix and Nix, that doesn’t essentially imply they’ll be drafted within the No. 8 to 12 vary like these two have been. Groups in want of a brand new, younger passer don’t have the posh to attend round that lengthy and hope that nobody trades forward or takes a flyer on their future franchise arm. A QB want tends to make NFL groups antsy, typically forcing them to overvalue a passer.
There’s a lot left to be seen via the rest of the faculty season, convention championships and the School Soccer Playoff. Following that might be prospect video games, just like the Senior Bowl and East-West Shrine Bowl, the NFL Scouting Mix and every college’s professional day. Who is aware of? Possibly we’ll even see Sanders for the West suiting up in opposition to Ward for the East in Frisco, Texas, this winter. Till then, each quarterbacks nonetheless have so much to show in an effort to hear their names referred to as early on the primary night time of the draft.
