Shedeur Sanders 2025 NFL Draft Profile

Shedeur Sanders 2025 NFL Draft Profile

The draft politics are bad enough this time of year. We’re squarely in lying season and it’s hard to trust anything you hear out there. Once Shedeur Sanders gets brought up, we’re talking about an entirely different animal. This is when the casuals come out to make sure their lack of intellectual honesty is on full display.

This is about getting to the truth. If we maintain the philosophy of the Chinese Farmer and remember that we are indeed more than our thoughts, we can get to what really matters. The answers are there for us. We just have to find them. There are plenty of breadcrumbs to pick up here so take a seat and let’s have a chat about the Colorado quarterback in this edition of the 2025 NFL Draft profile series.

I usually like getting to the point but in this instance, I think it’s best to start with a story. Context is very important this time of year. If you want to skip story time, feel free to glance over the next paragraph and just remember an important lesson to be learned is humans love moving the goalposts rather than admitting they were wrong. Admitting when you’re wrong is what gives you credibility. Most draft people don’t do that. They just move on to the next draft and pretend the stupid things they said the year before never happened.

I promise this won’t be a long story time and many people don’t care about this part. I’m not asking you to. I’m mostly trying to use it as a point to remind you that what we’re truly looking at with evaluating talent is identifying snapshots in moment of time and trying to project it forward….

Anywho, I’m in the best fantasy league on the planet. It’s an auction draft where you can sign players to 1, 2, and 3 year contracts with a two round rookie draft. Players become available in the rookie draft after the conclusion of their true freshman season. You can then sign that player for what becomes their first three NFL seasons. Point of the story, I’m forced to think about these guys far sooner than most people who cover this do. I’m three months away from trying to figure out how good Keelon Russell and Bryce Underwood are.

I wrote this article back in 2023 before he ever got his feet wet at Colorado. It was essentially about whether Shedeur had a real NFL future. All of the things we said back then track pretty well to today. He’s very much an NFL quarterback. It’s a matter of just how good he is. That’s what we’re going to really investigate today and do our best to tell the truth. If you forgot that people acted like he was an undraftable player when he was at Jackson State, you’re welcome for the reminder.

NFL Draft Stock Report: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, Week 7, Week 8, Week 10, Week 11, Week 12, Week 14, Alamo Bowl, East-West (1)

It would be fair to say I followed Shedeur closely this past year ^. Feel free to read those stock notes because it has a lot of revealing information in there. If you do peruse them, you will notice some themes. Very poised and doesn’t really make those panic decisions. The Hail Marry against Baylor was so damn clutch. The accuracy is very much there on deep balls down the field and does a great job putting touch to give his guys a chance. More importantly, he’s a big reason why this Colorado team went 9-4 because they’re not exactly rich with depth.

Sanders, 23, was a three-star recruit out of the state of Texas. That may sound underwhelming but he did have offers from Florida, Florida State, Georgia, LSU, and Alabama coming out of high school. He wasn’t part of the Elite 11 circuits but for a long time, people questioned if he was even a legit three-star. Many people wondered if he only got those offers because of who his dad is. If it isn’t clear now, it should be now. Shedeur is very much a legit NFL prospect. Brother Shilo is for sure not.

Yes, Shedeur is the son of Deion Sanders, but I’m quite sure anyone who is reading this already knows that. I don’t want to sound like a Wikipedia page but I think it’s important to note it for one obvious reason. Deion would humiliate his son if they ran a 40 at the same age. They’re very different style players. If anything, Deion is more similar to Travis Hunter than his own son. The NFL bloodlines are there but beyond that, I’m not sure how much of a factor the Deion thing really is beyond the fact that he wants his son to play for a competent coach/franchise like Arch Manning did for his sons.

Shedeur checks in at a tick under 6-foot-2, 212, and really isn’t a physically imposing signal caller. No Big Ben vibes here. Very much a traditional pocket passer and always has been. Let’s not act like he’s a statue either. The mobility is more than adequate. He’s just not winning any races against speed demons. He scored eight rushing touchdowns over the last two years, which isn’t nothing. He also has negative rushing yards during those years but that’s from holding onto the ball from taking too many sacks, but we’ll get to that next. We don’t have any tracking from the Combine after bailing on all of the predraft events but I’d guess he’s somewhere in the 4.8-5.1 range just from watching him.

If you’re looking for reasons to be a hater, you can find them. The Colorado signal caller took 42 sacks this past year. That mark actually led all of FBS. Somehow it was even worse the year before taking 52 sacks in 2023. Look, we’re very much talking about a Colorado team that won one singular game before the Prime crew showed up. The offensive line was terrible but genuinely improved once the likes of Jordan Seaton got there. His line was brutal but it doesn’t excuse the holding onto the ball too long issue. A fair amount of sacks were on Sanders. There were times when it felt obnoxious like I was watching a boomer play a video game and couldn’t figure out the buttons to hit on the controller in time to pass the ball. If you told me that he was intentionally taking sacks in order to preserve his completion percentage rate by refusing to throw the ball away… I wouldn’t tell you that you were crazy. In fact… I may actually believe you.

One more quick thing on the pocket stuff. It’s not just the sacks. This dude will eat sacks 15 yards in the wrong direction. It’s the mega sacks that kill you and he takes them. Also, he just one career fumble at Colorado but I worry that he could develop the Justin Fields disease of fumblities at the next level with an increase to the speed of the game. Needs to be more of a two-handed monster at the Pro level instead of running around with one hand on the ball pretending he’s Lamar Jackson in the running department. Shedeur also has this egregious drifting quality where he drops too far back and leaves himself open to swimmers on the edge who will lose the rep but still win because of it. Needs to step up in the pocket far more than he does.

If you’re looking for more negatives, there is one other major one that needs to be discussed that has nothing to do with this pretend circus that people want to make up. The guy is a total check-down machine. I don’t have an actual counter on this but if you really went back and tracked all the times he throws the ball sideways per game, it would blow your mind. I called Will Howard and Riley Leonard QB draw queens. Shedeur is the bubble screen queen. Cam Ward would co-sign that statement, by the way.

If someone wants to go back and count that it would be awesome, but I do have this stat for you. Sheduer’s minus-1.8 average air yards to the first-down marker ranked 132nd among 147 qualifying FBS quarterbacks. You can’t miss it if you watch him. Also has a bit of an elongated release. The WTF how did Cam Ward get the ball out of his hands like a shortstop that quick quality, Shedeur doesn’t have it. Sanders had 21 passes batted down at the line of scrimmage over the past two seasons. That’s good enough for 5th worst in all of FBS.

Again, everything has a Yin and a Yang to it. It’s wonderful that he’s accurate on the easy stuff. Anthony Richardson would amputate his pinky toe in a heartbeat to pull a Space Jam and have the Monstars steal that ability for him. It’s just far too much part of his arsenal and his 74% completion percentage mark is probably a tad inflated.

Speaking of Cam Ward though, you have to give Shedeur this. He’s tough to the point where you wouldn’t believe he is a nepo baby. He trains with Ward and embraces the competition rather than shying away from it. You can tell in training those guys push each other to be better. The toughness showed up during the Fall plenty. Guy took some massive hits and stood there in the pocket delivering each time. Can’t question his makeup in that department. Deion nicknamed Shedeur “grown” and it plays. He’s mature and a fighter. Despite taking all those hits, there was never an issue with his eye level dropping, which becomes a bad habit for many young quarterbacks. They’re not exactly reading four different progressions in college but his eyes are up and down the field in the vertical passing game when asked to do it.

We can run through the production quickly. I’m just not sure how relevant the 70 touchdowns over two years at Jackson State mean. The 2023 and 2024 seasons (even though it’s still against the Big 12) are the more revealing data points. The Colorado QB posted a 27-3 TD to INT ratio in 2023 with 7.5 yards per attempt and 69.3% completion. This past year we’re looking at a TD to INT ratio of 37-10 at 8.7 YPA. The biggest question in all of this. If he could trade offensive lines with Texas, what would the numbers look like? A fascinating question I wish I had the answer to because it would go a long way to figuring out just how good this player is.

The supporting cast may not have been ideal, but it also might not have been totally terrible. If you count Travis Hunter, Colorado might have four receivers drafted this year. That’s not nothing. His guys made some great plays on the ball and Hunter was his own little cheat code. Will Sheppard was still a bum sometimes but this guy had real help at receiver that he may not have at the next level. Pat Shurmur was his OC though and most QBs coming up don’t have former NFL head coaches helping them out as assistants. Sanders wasn’t overly creative when forced to adapt. It was more of using the cheat code that is Travis Hunter, and it’s hard to blame him for that. Pretty good at throwing those moon balls and more often than not, they worked.

I don’t have any concerns in the arm juice area. We’ve seen him make big boy throws down the field. I wouldn’t ask him to paint a 96 MPH heater on the black but he’s clearly above the line of demarcation to make NFL throws. There’s just a reason why a guy like Cam Ward can afford to be more aggressive taking chances. Shedeur’s arm is probably quantified as pretty decent but not special. Threw plenty of balls down in that 20-30 yard range in the middle of the field on a line. I’ll say this though. He’s not overly twitched up. The ball certainly looks better on him when he’s clean compared to when he’s doing the off-platform stuff. Very good pure point guard distributor but is he physically imposing enough for that to translate to the NFL level? The pure traits are good but probably not the greatest thing you’ve ever seen. Never going to be blown away by the zip on his balls.

Let’s just recognize you have to understand what you’re getting here. Accuracy is still king and he’s got that in spades. Even if you want to say the completion rate is a tick inflated, Sanders notched the fifth-lowest rate of uncatchable throws in the FBS. The guy throws a really nice ball and it’s on target far more often than it isn’t. Only had 1.3% turnover-worthy play rate, which was third best in FBS. Takes care of the ball and throws it to where it needs to be. That’s a really good foundation to build on to where it’s hard to imagine him just straight up flopping. It’s not just accuracy either. It’s top tier ball placement to all areas of the field.

I have a late first/early second round grade on Shedeur Sanders. No reason why he can’t become a red chip caliber starting quarterback at the next level. He’s too tough and too much of a surgical thrower of the football to be counted out. Given the nature of the position, I totally understand why someone would pull the trigger at the top of the first round. Sure, Shedeur isn’t perfect but nobody is coming out of college. There are plenty of reasons to believe and buy into why this can work.

Comp = Teddy Bridgewater on steroids. Coaching will determine the scale of how much better of a version of Bridgewater that is.

*This article will be edited after the conclusion of the Colorado Pro Day on April 4th. A link to that post will be placed here once that event concludes. This stuff is about trust and I hope I’ve displayed enough of it to warrant the journalistic integrity on that*.

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