Where could Colorado QB Shedeur Sanders be selected in the 2025 NFL Draft?

Of course, much can change between now and next April, and there will surely be several players who author standout performances in their final collegiates seasons and put themselves on the radar of teams eyeing franchise quarterbacks. One player that we already know will be a focus of such clubs is Colorado QB Shedeur Sanders.

Sanders, the son of NFL legend and Colorado head coach Deion Sanders, was eligible to declare for the 2024 draft, though he elected to remain in school for one more season. 

Per Jason La Canfora of The Washington Post, there is a variance of opinion as to where Sanders would have been picked if he had entered the 2024 draft, but several top execs believe the Buffaloes star will be firmly in the No. 1 overall discussion in 2025.

The GM of one club who could be in the market for an elite QB prospect next year said of Shedeur: 

“Absolutely, he was a first-round pick [in 2024]. Absolutely. There would have been seven [QBs taken in the first round]. We obviously didn’t do as much work on him as the other quarterbacks once he announced he wasn’t coming out, but he would have been in the top three [quarterbacks] for us this year, I think, had he gone through the entire process. He probably would have been up there with [Caleb] Williams and [Jayden] Daniels.”

The Buffaloes were the talk of college football at the beginning of the 2023 season when they stormed out to a 3-0 start with the dynamic father/son duo leading the charge. The bloom fell off the rose pretty quickly, though, as Colorado lost eight of its nine conference games to finish at the bottom of the Pac-12 standings.

For his part, Shedeur completed just under 70 percent of his passes for 27 touchdowns against just three picks last year. That followed an even more impressive 2022 season in which he connected on over 70 percent of his pass attempts and piled up 40 touchdowns and only six picks, although that performance came as a member of Jackson State, the FCS program that his father coached before he moved to Boulder.

An agent who recruited many members of the 2024 class of QBs told La Canfora that the Commanders would have seriously considered Sanders if he had entered the 2024 draft. 

A different talent evaluator who is employed by a team that did select a QB this year said:

“I would have been stacking him right there with Daniels or [Drake] Maye. Definitely would have had him before [Michael] Penix, [J.J.] McCarthy or [Bo] Nix. If this kid comes out, he’s going in the top five or six picks. He could be the first pick of [the 2025] draft.”

Several of La Canfora’s sources said that Deion’s involvement in the process could be a complicating factor, with one such source calling him a “loose cannon,” but that will surely not deter a team who places a first-round grade on Shedeur. 

If the younger Sanders can put together a 2024 showing similar to his 2023 output, it sounds as if he could be the first player off the board in April 2025.