Coming off of a first-team All-Big 12 season in 2024, Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders is a candidate to become the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft.
The son of Pro Football Hall of Famer and Colorado head coach Deion Sanders, the Colorado QB has emerged from his father’s shadow after four strong seasons as a collegiate starter. Especially in a weaker quarterback class, he has the chance to be the first player off the board come April.
Shedeur Sanders’ Draft Profile and Measurements
- Height: 6’2″
- Weight: 215 pounds
- Position: Quarterback
- School: Colorado
- Current Year: Senior
One of five siblings, Sanders first started to make a name for himself in high school. As the starting quarterback for Trinity Christian School in Cedar Hill, Texas. In 2020, he completed 251 of his 366 passing attempts for 3,702 yards and 43 touchdowns. His father, Coach Primes, served as the school’s offensive coordinator there.
Sanders was rated as a four-star recruit coming out of high school and committed to Jackson State, an FCS school and HBCU powerhouse that has produced four Pro Football Hall of Famers. He decided once his father became the Tigers’ head coach; he initially committed to Florida Atlantic over offers from Power Five schools like Alabama, Florida State, Georgia, and LSU.
Initially ineligible to play in Jackson State’s COVID-19-abbreviated 2021 spring season, Sanders took on the job as the Tigers’ starting quarterback in the fall of 2021. Jackson State went just 4-8 in 2019, and though there was some improvement with Coach Prime at the helm in the spring campaign (4-3), there was still quite a bit of work to be done.
With Sanders at quarterback and his father as head coach, Jackson State won the Southwestern Athletic Conference and finished the year 11-2. As a true freshman, Sanders threw for 3,231 yards with 30 touchdowns and eight interceptions on a completion percentage of 65.9%. He won the Jerry Rice Award in 2021 as the best freshman player in the FCS.
He started again the following year, improving to 3,732 passing yards, 40 touchdowns, and six interceptions with a 70.6% completion percentage. Jackson State as a team also improved in 2022, going 12-1 and just narrowly losing the Celebration Bowl to North Carolina Central in overtime. In addition to finishing as the SWAC Offensive Player of the Year, Sanders also earned the Deacon Jones Trophy as the top HBCU player in the nation.
When Coach Prime took the head coaching job at Colorado, his son soon followed after a brief stint in the transfer portal. Though the signal caller had a solid 2023 campaign, the Buffaloes fell short of expectations with a 4-8 record. There was an individual success to be found in his jump from the FCS to the then-Power Five level, as he threw for 3,230 yards, 27 touchdowns, and just three interceptions with a 69.3% completion percentage.
Although Sanders garnered buzz as a potential prospect for the 2024 NFL Draft, he decided to return to Colorado for his senior year of college. That decision proved to be a fruitful one, as both he and the Buffaloes saw improvements over the previous year.
Colorado went 9-4 and finished the regular season ranked in the AP Poll Top 25. Sanders increased his numbers to 4,134 passing yards, 37 passing touchdowns, and 10 interceptions with a career-high 74.0% completion percentage. He was named the Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year in 2024 for his efforts.
Scouting Report
Strengths
- Offers acceptable velocity with some nice zip behind his throws.
- Capable of delivering strikes into tight windows.
- Hits receivers in stride outside of the numbers with good speed and accuracy.
- Has a sharp internal sense of timing behind his throws.
- Naturally accurate passer who has good touch down the field.
- Showcases serious flashes of impressive deep-ball accuracy.
- Tough quarterback who can take a hit and keep on dealing.
- Pocket mobility allows him to evade incoming defenders.
- Does a great job of making sound decisions in a clean pocket.
- Able to take over a game in the clutch with composure and an ability to elevate those around him.
- Thrives in the pocket and enters an NFL where short, quick passes are often used to maximize offensive efficiency, which plays to his strengths quite well.
- Showed significant progression across all four seasons he played at the collegiate level.
Weaknesses
- Not a bad athlete for a quarterback, but he’s not as athletic as he thinks he is.
- Has a tendency to hold onto the ball too long instead of hitting the check-down or throwing the ball away.
- Lateral agility or breakaway speed with the ball in his hands is generally pretty average.
- Has a game-manager skill set but a gunslinger mentality, which can come back to bite him.
- Follow-through in his throwing motion is inconsistent, as his footwork and hip rotation aren’t regularly sound.
- Tends to drift backward in the pocket to avoid pressure instead of stepping up.
- Can be a split second too late to read a receiver’s route tempo, which can see him miss out on extra YAC by hitting his open targets a hair too late.
- Has made some concerning comments to the media, indicating a potential lack of accountability.
- Chirps a lot on the field, which can leave him susceptible to occasional unsportsmanlike penalties.
Current Draft Projection and Summary
How highly one values Sanders likely depends on how much one prioritizes positional value when putting together a draft board. If you put a premium on the quarterback position, it’s pretty clear Sanders is a first-round value. If not, though, the decision is not so simple.
Sanders is an accurate and tough quarterback with a well-built frame and plenty of throws, hitting his targets in stride from each deep third of the field. He has a good enough arm to execute throws to targets in tight windows, and there’s a natural sense of timing that tells him where to place the ball right where only his receivers can get it.
That said, there’s some mental development that needs to take place for Sanders. He’s shown that he’s capable of making full-field reads, but he tends to play Superman when he doesn’t have the raw physical talent to make that work.
His arm, though acceptable, isn’t particularly special. He’s not a statue in the pocket, but his athleticism is average. These issues can see him try too hard to extend plays that he simply can’t make, resulting in sacks or poor throws.
Compared to the quarterbacks in the 2024 NFL Draft, I would argue Sanders would come in seventh as a prospect, ranking behind each of the six quarterbacks selected in the first round. This might make him more of a Day 2 talent, but the 2025 NFL Draft has a severe lack of high-end quarterback value.
Sanders arguably has the highest floor of any quarterback in the class, and he has the tools to become a solid starter in the NFL. In the right system, he could lead a team to a playoff run. Because of average physical tools, the ceiling likely does not go much further than that. However, a respectable starting quarterback is a valuable asset in today’s game, which should see him selected with a top-10 pick come April.
