The 2025 NFL Draft Basics
We’ve gone a week without football. Can you believe it? You just experienced the first Sunday without NFL football in months – and the first of many over the next few months. At this point, everyone except for the most deliriously celebratory Eagles fan has started to turn their attention away from the 2024 NFL season and onto the 2025 edition. This means free agency evaluations, trade rumors, and somehow still the Jaguars’ GM job, but most of all, this means that it’s time to dive into the NFL Draft once again. Of course, there are the draft obsessives that probably have Travis Hunter’s middle school stats memorized, but for the rest of us, this is the time where we start focusing on the incoming rookie class. We’ll eventually get to a point where we have a favorite Day 3 inside linebacker, but for now, let’s talk through 11 big-picture, high-level questions that will at least give you enough direction to start conversations with your friends as you fill the NFL-action-sized hole in your weekend plans.
It’s always about the QBs – so who are the QBs?
The big 2 are Cam Ward from Miami and Shedeur Sanders from Colorado. It’s not seen as a great QB class – Ward & Sanders are seen as pretty solid first-rounders, but not the elite prospects that the 2024 draft class had. Think more Nix / Penix tier than Williams / Daniels / Maye. That’s fine – there can still be real success with a QB even if he doesn’t have messianic hype, but there’s a bit more evaluation going into these guys. Ward is toolsier, with a big arm and a bit more scrambling juice. He looks to take shots, usually for better though sometimes for worse. Sanders is pretty smart and accurate, but doesn’t have the physical juice that you might expect from Deion’s son. (You’re gonna hear SO much about him being Deion’s son.) He’s likely more of a game manager than a true elevator as a QB, but there’s enough to work with here that he’s a real first-rounder – who should be elated if he can follow the Bo Nix trajectory and land with an offensive guru.
Any other QBs to note?
Again, it’s a moderate class – not awful, but nothing crazy good either. Jaxson Dart from Ole Miss has some dual-threat upside and strong physical tools, and is probably the favorite to be QB3 at the moment. There are questions about his college offense & how he’ll translate into more complicated NFL offenses (and into facing more complicated NFL defenses). Jalen Milroe from Alabama is super athletic and super unrefined, Tyler Shough from Louisville has a big arm and a checkered medical past, etc. Maybe one of them rises into the late first, but certainly once you’re past Ward & Sanders, it’s more of a year to take a swing on a developmental guy on Day 2 than to hitch your franchise’s future to any of them on Day 1. There are some fun Day 2 guys – I think Ohio State’s Will Howard has something to him – so it’s a good year to need a backup but a bad year to need a starter.
Who are the best players in the class?
The two biggest names are WR/CB Travis Hunter from Colorado and EDGE Abdul Carter from Penn State. We’ll talk more about Hunter below, but he’s an outrageous athlete that is arguably the greatest two-way prospect ever. Carter is going to get Micah Parsons comps as a toolsy pass rusher from Penn State … but he’s probably not the freak-of-all-freak athlete that Parsons is. Still excellent, still deservedly towards the top of 2025 boards, but a little lighter (250 lbs. is fine for an edge) and probably won’t walk into the top pass rusher in the league discussion, at least not right away. Underneath these guys, it’s a balanced tier of strong prospects with slight questions, but it feels like there’s some separation between Hunter / Carter and whoever is third on your Big Board.
Who’s third on your Big Board?
The boring answer is that I like DT Mason Graham from Michigan. Maybe he lacks the ceiling of a Jalen Carter type from a few years back, but he’s powerful, angry, and hardworking, with plenty of skill as well.
If he’s the boring answer, who’s the fun answer?
Pop some popcorn and throw on some Ashton Jeanty tape. We don’t get elite RBs every year, and Jeanty is about as elite as it gets. The only thing he might not have is lightning-fast long speed, but he’s extremely complete. He’s tough and compact, good at eluding and breaking tackles, and has very good vision. His superpower may be his contact balance – he’s ridiculously hard to bring down. Playing for Boise State meant that he got to beat up on lower-quality defenses a little … but it also meant that when he did face the top teams, they’d be keying in on him all day. Despite all that attention, he still put up excellent stats (watch him vs. Oregon this year as an example). RB draft spots are always tricky, and we probably won’t see RBs in the top 5 again – gone are the not-even-that-distant days of Ezekiel Elliott and Saquon Barkley. He’s seen as pretty comparable to Bijan Robinson as a prospect, who went 8th … so top-10 certainly isn’t out of the question.
What are the best positions in this year’s draft class?
DL, TE, and RB are the most common answers. There’s a slew of pass-rushers, both inside and out – Carter and Graham might both go in the top 4, with the DL picks continuing to fly off the board from there. There’s a chance at multiple first round TEs, which isn’t an every year occurrence. Tyler Warren from Penn State is a complete prospect that can block, line up inline, or flex out – and Colston Loveland from Michigan is the speedy pass-catching weapon that teams love. At RB, there’s a drop-off after Jeanty, but then a massive second & third tier. Kaleb Johnson from Iowa is a complete player and has size that NFL teams like, while TreVeyon Henderson from Ohio State is a speedy receiving back who has enough juice as a pure rusher to play on any down – either could maybe sneak into the first round. Omarion Hampton from UNC is a physical hammer who produced both with & without Drake Maye … he might be more of a second rounder, but that’s still high praise for a rookie RB. Any – or multiple – of these guys could become impact players (both for real life and for fantasy football) as rookies.
You’ve talked about the other fantasy-relevant positions – what about WR?
After a couple outrageous WR classes, this year’s version doesn’t look all that special. Tetairoa McMillan from Arizona is most people’s WR1 (excluding Hunter), and his peak would be a Mike Evans / Tee Higgins style, big-bodied X receiver. He might not have the explosiveness of the really freaky alpha WRs, but a lot of people think he’ll be a top-10 pick. Beyond that, there’s some functional guys who will struggle to live up to the precedent on the hyper-productive 2024 class. Luther Burden III from Missouri is a Deebo-lite type of multifaceted weapon, but his inconsistent production isn’t anything to gush over. Emeka Egbuka put together an excellent receiving career at Ohio State, but he was consistently outshone by the better NFL prospects he played alongside in his time there. Good options, but not great ones.
You’ve mentioned Travis Hunter’s choice of positions a couple times – what’s his deal?
He’s arguably WR1 and CB1 in this class – dude is amazing – but most people don’t think he’ll be able to play two ways on a full-time basis in the NFL. That’s not a knock; nobody has done that since the early days of the NFL, when the Browns were actually good. It’s been a long time. The feeling seems to be (1) that he’s a little more special at CB, (2) that WR is easier to put together a specific package of plays for, and thus (3) that he’s more likely to end up at CB full-time and WR part-time than vice versa. It’s possible that could change depending on what team he goes to – and Hunter himself has been pretty tight-lipped about exactly how he sees his role in the NFL. It’ll be a fascinating mystery until we actually see him on the NFL field.
Speaking of Colorado players with question marks – what’s the big question with Shedeur Sanders?
Well, arguably, if he’ll be good. Or at least good enough to make him worth building your franchise around. But beyond that, Deion has been very clear that he & Shedeur are not interested in every team, and that he will do whatever it takes to direct his son to a team of his choosing. However, there isn’t much clarity on how large that list of teams is, or who exactly is on it. There’s some speculation that Tennessee (#1 overall), the New York Giants (#3 overall), and Las Vegas (#6 overall) are acceptable teams – and with Drake Maye’s Patriots at #4 & Trevor Lawrence’s Jaguars at #5, this may just mean that Cleveland is the one unacceptable outcome at #2. But who really knows? Deion seems to want to keep those conversations behind closed doors, though that doesn’t mean that Team Sanders’ opinions are any less certain. Which teams want Shedeur? Which teams does Shedeur want? The public is in the dark. Prepare for anything.
Who’s a big riser right now?
At the moment, it’s probably EDGE Shemar Stewart from Texas A&M. He’s a tremendous athlete – 6’5”, 280 lbs., with very good burst – who dominated throughout the week at the Senior Bowl. His college profile lacks some production, as he only totaled 4.5 career sacks, so there is some cause for concern. His pressure numbers were pretty strong though, and he flashes on tape, so someone will talk themselves into taking the swing – and higher than the draft industry might think.
Are there any team-specific fits that stand out?
Honestly, it’s a more jumbled year than most seem to be, so there aren’t a lot of easy connections to mock draft together.
In part, this is due to prospects that are more good than great. For example, Will Campbell is a very smart and tough OL from LSU, and New England desperately needs to keep Drake Maye upright – but arm length questions have some projecting Campbell to kick inside to OG (or even center) instead of staying at LT. Maybe he solidifies his measurables at the combine – but we won’t know for a while how he’s viewed within the league.
In part, this is due to questions about when & where the QBs will go off the board. We’ve talked about this already, I’m not going to repeat everything – but this is not 2024, when 6 went in the first 12. We might not get 3 in the first round at all.
And in part, this is due to some pretty bad teams with a lot of holes being up at the top of the draft – is there really anyone in the top 10 that seems even borderline playoff-caliber in 2025? Maaaybe Jacksonville if Coen is a hit (and even that’s mostly because of a bad division)? Sure, we would have said this about Washington in 2024 – but they got a transformational franchise QB, and that kind of guy doesn’t seem to be in this class.
At the end of the day, there are a lot of teams with a lot of holes to fill, and a lot of intrigue about who deserves to be at the top of the board in general. Expect unpredictability both throughout the process and on draft night itself.
