Shedeur Sanders has helped the Colorado Buffaloes knock on the door of a conference championship in his final season. While they ultimately fell short, Sanders led the team to a 9-3 record, rising from the ashes of a dismal 4-8 season from his opening act in Boulder.
The quarterback accumulated 3,926 passing yards with 35 touchdowns and eight interceptions, completing 337 of 454 passes in the process. Now, he is being considered a Day 1 selection, with many outlets, including our recent mock draft, projecting him to go with the first-overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft to the Las Vegas Raiders.
NFL Insider Calls Shedeur Sanders the Top QB of 2024
With Sanders’ incredible production, there has been plenty of discourse about whether he’s the best quarterback in college football right now. Insider Joel Klatt, on his eponymous podcast, gave an analysis of why he believes Sanders deserves the title.
“If you actually look at Shedeur’s season, what you’re gonna find is that nobody had a better quarterback year than Shedeur Sanders because no one was under the amount of pressure he was both from a production standpoint and a pressure standpoint.
“If you combine what he meant to the offense and what he was facing from the opposition. No one was close to that. He was actually sacked 38 times. That’s what fourth in the country? … He led the country in completion percentage at 74%. He was second in passing touchdowns, third in passing yards. And he accounted for 82% of Colorado’s offense, that was the best in college football.”
"He's got this rare combination of both surgeon and artist." 🎨🤌@joelklatt on Shedeur Sanders' impressive season, and why he'll be the first QB taken in the NFL draft 🔥👀 pic.twitter.com/qairzr9HXj
— The Joel Klatt Show: A CFB Pod (@JoelKlattShow) December 17, 2024
Sacked 52 times in 2023, Sanders improved his play under pressure with 38 sacks in 2024.
“Best quarterback year, I thought, was Shedeur Sanders,” Klatt continued. “That will play out in the draft. I do believe he’s going to be the first quarterback selected in the NFL Draft. He’s got this rare combination of both surgeon and artist. Normally quarterbacks really lean heavily into one or the other and I feel like he’s got equal parts of both. When he is protected, he is surgical.
“He has a real command of the game. He’s highly intelligent, he’s got the command of the timing of the game and the spacing of the route structure. He can throw guys open. He’s got a stronger arm than you anticipate but he also can change pace on the football. Layer it, throw it with touch, throw it with accuracy into tight windows.”
Sanders’ capacity to perform under pressure stood out numerous times this season, leading Colorado to several exciting wins. One example was the Buffaloes’ September game against Baylor, where Sanders’ game-tying touchdown in the final moments forced overtime, leading to a 38-31 win.
With his collection of accuracy, poise, and down-to-down consistency, he’s made a strong case to be the first quarterback taken come April.