Why Colorado QB Shedeur Sanders in QB1 in the 2025 NFL Draft

• A solid statistical profile: Over the 2024 season, Shedeur Sanders ranked third in passing grade, trailing only Dart and Cam Ward. He finished second in accuracy rate on throws between 5 and 25 yards downfield, behind only Dart. He also posted the fourth-highest success rate under pressure, trailing Will Howard, Dart and Kyle McCord.

• The things you can’t teach: Sanders won’t blow you away with his athleticism, nor will he turn heads with elite arm strength. But if you’re looking for a quarterback with high-level accuracy, sound decision-making and undeniable poise under pressure, Sanders is your guy.

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

Last week, I made the case for Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart as a top-15 prospect in this draft class, a take that sits firmly in the middle of one of the most divided discussions in recent draft memory. Few players have sparked more debate than Dart, but another quarterback generating plenty of discussion is Shedeur Sanders. While the opinions on Sanders aren’t quite as extreme, they still vary widely — though most analysts agree he belongs in the top 50.

As I outlined in my article on Jaxson Dart, evaluating quarterbacks goes beyond raw stats—it requires a deep dive into both their statistical production and film profile:

I blend data and film to evaluate players. At quarterback, data can provide valuable insight, but if a player lacks the arm strength needed for the NFL, the numbers may not matter. Likewise, a quarterback might check every box on film—big arm, ideal size, good mobility—but if his grading profile and data are poor, he may be overrated due to certain biases.

Of course, there are outliers in both directions — Josh Allen had an extremely poor data profile, while Colt McCoy graded well but lacked the physical tools to succeed at the NFL level. The key is recognizing these outliers rather than “trying to find the next Josh Allen.”

Generally, successful NFL quarterbacks fit certain analytical criteria, and that’s what we aim to identify in this class.

The Case for Shedeur Sanders

PFF lead draft analyst Trevor Sikkema has Shedeur Sanders 47th overall and as QB2 on his post-combine big board, while the consensus big board has him as the fourth-best player and also QB2. For me, Sanders is the top quarterback in the 2025 draft class, and I’ll break down why — starting with the data, just as I did with Jaxson Dart.

While Jaxson Dart stands atop this class from a data-driven perspective, Shedeur Sanders isn’t far behind. As with Dart, I’m ranking Sanders against the top 10 quarterbacks on the PFF big board, with one post-Combine change: Louisville’s Tyler Shough now holds the 10th spot, replacing Indiana’s Kurtis Rourke.

When analyzing quarterback data, I focus primarily on sack avoidance, accuracy and performance under pressure, placing extra weight on production against Power Four opponents. While overall grades and raw stats provide useful context, they carry slightly less weight in my evaluations.

Over the 2024 season, Sanders ranked third in passing grade, trailing only Dart and Cam Ward. He finished second in accuracy rate on throws between 5 and 25 yards downfield, behind only Dart. He also posted the fourth-highest success rate under pressure, trailing Will Howard, Dart and Kyle McCord.

After adjusting for Power Four competition, Sanders finished fourth in passing grade behind Ward, Dart and Howard; third in accuracy rate behind Shough and Gabriel; and fifth in success rate under pressure behind Howard, Dart, McCord and Gabriel.

While his data profile dipped slightly against stronger competition, it remains well in the realm of being good enough. Sanders’ 86.6 passing grade is better than the final collegiate seasons of C.J. Stroud (86.4), Jared Goff (84.7) and Patrick Mahomes (82.4) while falling just short of Deshaun Watson (87.3), Drake Maye (87.3) and Trevor Lawrence (87.6).

His accuracy has never been in question, but to put his 65.2% accuracy rate on throws between 5 and 25 yards this past season into perspective, it is the seventh-highest rate in the PFF era among past first-round quarterbacks and other post-first-rounders who have become successful NFL signal-callers.

His 35.8% success rate under pressure is comparable to the final collegiate seasons of Maye (35.2%), Lamar Jackson (36.5%) and Mahomes (36.6%).

Again, his data profile isn’t as good as Dart’s and not as good as the top three from last year’s class (Bo Nix, J.J. McCarthy and Jayden Daniels), but it’s better than a number of successful NFL passers.

If there’s one red flag from a data standpoint — one that also shows up on film — it is that the Colorado product tends to run into pressure and take sacks. He was the most sacked quarterback in this draft class, going down 43 times, though his sack-to-pressure rate wasn’t the worst. Sanders was sacked on 18.2% of his pressured dropbacks, ranking seventh among the top 10 quarterbacks. However, unlike Dart, whose pressure-to-sack rate improved against better competition, Sanders’ got worse. Against Power Four opponents, he was sacked on 20.1% of his pressured dropbacks, the second-worst rate in the class.

Another common knock on Sanders is that he doesn’t possess the same level of arm talent as Ward or Dart. He won’t win any contests for the strongest arm or the ability to launch accurate deep balls on the move from 40-plus yards. But that’s not his game. Sanders thrives in rhythm, dissecting defenses within the structure of the play and executing with precise timing.

A turnaround orchestrated by a top-tier quarterback

What happened to Sanders at Colorado was largely out of necessity, even if his approach sometimes made things harder on himself. Outside of Travis Hunter and Sanders himself, Colorado’s offense lacked NFL-caliber talent. He stepped into one of the worst programs in college football, a team coming off a 1-11 season, and was immediately tasked with leading a massive turnaround.

In his first year, Sanders gave the program an instant spark, guiding Colorado to a season-opening road win over TCU and a 3-0 start, with the offense averaging 41 points per game. However, reality quickly set in. The team’s porous defense and overall lack of talent proved too much to overcome, leading to six straight losses to close out the season.

In his second year, Colorado once again started 4-2, benefiting from an influx of talent via recruiting and the transfer portal. Unlike the previous season, the Buffaloes didn’t collapse down the stretch. Instead, Sanders led the team to four straight wins, putting them in serious contention for a spot in the expanded College Football Playoff. However, a late-season loss to Kansas ended those hopes, though the turnaround from a one-win team just two years prior remained remarkable.

The lack of a running game put even more pressure on Sanders to carry the offense. Among 70 Power Four programs, Colorado ranked third-worst in both EPA per rush and yards per attempt on designed runs. They ranked dead last in explosive run rate and total explosive runs, providing virtually no support for their quarterback.

With no ground game to lean on, everything fell on Sanders. Either he delivered and kept Colorado in games, or they struggled to compete. No quarterback in this draft class faced more pressure, both from opposing defenses and the limitations of his own offense. Behind a subpar offensive line, Sanders was forced to navigate constant duress, making his production all the more impressive.

I say all this to emphasize just how much Sanders had to overcome at Colorado. Without him, the Buffaloes would have been bottom-dwellers in the Big 12, nowhere near playoff contention. With him, they were in the conversation.

When I look at the NFL’s top quarterbacks, most didn’t come from powerhouse programs stacked with talent. Patrick Mahomes played on a bad Texas Tech team that likely would have won just one or two games without him. Lamar Jackson put a basketball school on the map in college football. Josh Allen played at Wyoming, a program rarely producing NFL talent. Only Joe Burrow came from a traditional blue-blood program, and he used that opportunity to orchestrate the greatest offense in college football history.

Even beyond the elite names, history shows that good quarterbacks often don’t come from the biggest programs. Tony Romo and Jimmy Garoppolo played at Eastern Illinois. Dak Prescott elevated Mississippi State to levels it had never reached. Aaron Rodgers and Jared Goff were both products of Cal, a school with little history of developing elite quarterbacks. The pattern is clear: NFL success isn’t dictated by playing for a powerhouse program — it’s about how a quarterback maximizes the talent around them. By that measure, Sanders passes the test.

Does all of this guarantee that Sanders will be a great NFL quarterback? Of course not. Plenty of quarterbacks from bad college programs never pan out at the next level. But what I’m emphasizing is that Sanders has walked through the fire. He’s endured the worst situations a quarterback can face—constant pressure, a nonexistent run game and an outmatched supporting cast—and he’s come out unshaken.

Listen to him in interviews. He carries unwavering confidence in his abilities, and he backs it up on tape. Time and time again, he stands tall in the pocket despite chaos unfolding around him, delivering strikes while taking brutal hits. And he gets back up — every single time.

Sanders also doesn’t fold in the biggest moments. He remains composed when the game is on the line, trusts his arm and makes plays.

In the two-minute drill, Sanders holds a 92.3 career passing grade against Power Four competition—the highest of all time.

Considering the lack of talent he’s had around him the past two seasons, the fact that he led Colorado to playoff contention while putting up elite numbers is hard to ignore. Then, when you turn on the film and watch him stand in the pocket, take hit after hit and still deliver pinpoint throws, the appreciation for his game only grows.

Sanders won’t blow you away with his athleticism, nor will he turn heads with elite arm strength. But if you’re looking for a quarterback with high-level accuracy, sound decision-making and undeniable poise under pressure, Sanders is your guy.