Colorado QB Shedeur Sanders makes Shrine Bowl decision

Sanders has been one of two leaders on an electric Buffalos team that is still in the running for the Big 12 championship and a spot in the College Football Playoff. Sanders ranks sixth in the FBS with 322.2 passing yards per game and is tied for second with 27 passing touchdowns, adding four scores on the ground. He has a chance to end the season with a bang by rattling off some wins here to close out 2024 and continue elevating his stock in the 2025 NFL Draft.

Ward is right up there with Sanders. He leads the FBS in both passing yards (3,409) and passing touchdowns (32) and has four additional scrimmage touchdowns of his own (three on the ground and one receiving). He’s led the Hurricanes to a 9-1 record through 10 games, and like Colorado, Miami is in position to appear in its conference title game and secure a spot in the 12-team playoff.

Past Sanders and Ward, though, experts view 2025’s quarterback class as fairly barren. In a discussion with Brock Huard of Fox Sports and Steve Serby of the New York Post, ESPN’s Matt Miller said that “it’s Shedeur 1…Cam 2, and then…there’s a bit of a gap between (them and) the next crop of quarterbacks,” including guys like Carson Beck of Georgia, Quinn Ewers of Texas and Jaxson Dart of Ole Miss.

Miller sees Sanders and Ward as the only two likely first-round picks in the class of passers. He projects Beck, Ewers, Penn State’s Drew Allar, Alabama’s Jalen Milroe and LSU’s Garrett Nussmeier as potential mid- to late-round projects but goes so far as to suggest that Milroe and Nussmeier return for another year of development in the SEC.

Even though Sanders and Ward are seen as clear favorites and leaders of this class, Miller speculated where the two would fall in last year’s draft class in a discussion with another NYP writer, Ryan Dunleavy. Miller claimed that, despite Sander’s “surgical” accuracy and Ward’s “ability to dial up velocity like crazy,” both fall lower than the first four quarterbacks taken last year, Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels, Drake Maye and J.J. McCarthy. He believes they compare more favorably with the other two first-round passers taken last year, Michael Penix and Bo Nix.

Just because he views Sanders and Ward more in the realm of Penix and Nix, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be drafted in the No. 8 to 12 range like those two were. Teams in need of a new, young passer don’t have the luxury to wait around that long and hope that no one trades ahead or takes a flyer on their future franchise arm. A QB need tends to make NFL teams antsy, often forcing them to overvalue a passer.

There’s plenty left to be seen through the remainder of the college season, conference championships and the College Football Playoff. Following that will be prospect games, like the Senior Bowl and East-West Shrine Bowl, the NFL Scouting Combine and each school’s pro day. Who knows? Maybe we’ll even see Sanders for the West suiting up against Ward for the East in Frisco, Texas, this winter. Until then, both quarterbacks still have a lot to prove in order to hear their names called early on the first night of the draft.