Why is Shedeur Sanders a top 2025 NFL Draft prospect? Let’s break down his game

During Deion Sanders’ run as the greatest press corner in the history of football, his mouth never wrote a check his performance couldn’t cash. Nobody had a bigger checkbook. Nobody made more debits.

During Sanders’ run as Colorado’s head coach? That’s been a bit more complicated — as was Sanders’ proclamation earlier this spring that his son, standout QB Shedeur Sanders, eventually will be a top-five pick in the NFL Draft.

Shedeur Sanders, a 6-foot-1, 198-pound senior, entered 2023 sneakily high on scouting radars after two sparkling years with his father at FCS Jackson State. In his first three games as an FBS quarterback at Colorado, he threw for 1,251 yards, 10 touchdowns and one pick with a near 80 percent completion rate. His team finished that year 1-8. And though Shedeur’s flashes continued, neither he nor Colorado maintained the same level of performance throughout the season.

In order to find out what’s real and what’s not about Shedeur Sanders, one has to unpack the whole box much more than they ever had to with his dad. Still, the QB’s a lot better than you might think — and if a few roster tweaks work out the way Colorado hopes, Sanders will show you that for three months this year, instead of three weeks.

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When Deion Sanders took over Colorado’s program, he inherited one of the worst run-blocking lines in college football. Building a run game of any substance takes years to improve, and little, if anything, about the process can be microwaved. Sanders’ first staff (led by former Kent State and current San Diego State head coach Sean Lewis) built an up-tempo, quick-strike offense reliant almost exclusively on the short pass game — something we’ve seen work at the Group of Five level, as well as in the Big 12 and the now-defunct Pac-12.

With this approach, the short pass game doubles as a run game, and actual run plays are called merely to give the quarterback’s arm a break. There is no attempt to set a physical tone or force the opponent to play mental chess about what you’re doing. It’s all reactionary.

The strategy, albeit a risky one against top-level competition, was fine enough given Colorado’s roster limitations. The execution was not.

Colorado brought in 11 new offensive linemen last year — five true freshmen, four junior college players, one FCS player and two from the Group of Five. Rather predictably, Shedeur Sanders finished the season as the most pressured passer in the FBS (197 times), having one of every three attempts impacted by a defender in his face.

Deion Sanders demoted Lewis after an Oct. 23 loss at UCLA, during which Shedeur was pressured a season-high 26 times to bring his running three-week total at the time to a ridiculous 68. (For context: Oregon’s eventual first-round pick, Bo Nix, was pressured 79 times all season.)

Colorado replaced Lewis with former NFL head coach/offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur. It also brought in new offensive line (Phil Loadholt) and receivers (Jason Phillips) coaches, both of whom have NFL experience, and again added several new faces along the offensive line. However, this time, zero of those O-line additions came from the juco ranks, and five of the six non-freshmen moved over from FBS schools.

Shurmur also has prioritized Colorado’s tight end position far more than Lewis did. Sav’ell Smalls (6-3, 260), twitched-up, former five-star edge prospect who transferred last season from Washington, will move to tight end (where he played in high school). Colorado also signed former Ohio State tight end Sam Hart, a 6-5, 255-pounder mostly known as a run blocker.

The plan is easy to follow: Colorado is attempting to morph its very college-style offense into something more professional.

Sanders finished 120th nationally in play-action attempts over the middle (and to an intermediate range) last season, with just 21. Data doesn’t say you need a good run game to thrive at play action, but if you aren’t at least attempting to pose a credible run threat, the misdirection is not going to work as well. By running to throw a bit more, Colorado should get Sanders into more favorable situations, in terms of down and distance and Sanders’ protection. Additionally, Shurmur’s tweaks to the quick game — like fewer option routes — will help an already accurate passer get the ball out even quicker.

The complicated part here? A large chunk of those 197 pressures (and 52 sacks) last season were Sanders’ fault.

In fairness, were you or I hit as many times as Sanders was last year, our “flight” instincts would kick in a lot faster, too. But you and I aren’t big-money starting quarterbacks. And despite Deion’s proclamation that he’ll be able to handpick where his son is drafted, playing behind a banged-up (or even bad) offensive line is basically something the average NFL quarterback faces for at least half the year, every year.

Shedeur’s entire process in the pocket — his drops, his in-structure footwork — has to speed up and improve.

He is not the athlete his dad was (nobody is). And though he’s solid enough size-wise, he’s nowhere near big enough to be a down-to-down run threat. Same time, everything about his athletic anticipation and body twitch gives me nostalgia for the general essence of how Deion Sanders moved on a field.

Sheduer’s ability to create on the move is one of his signature traits, and it can’t be coached out of his game. However, he must work on remaining loaded with his arm and eyes in the pocket, no matter the situation — especially in this new offense, as some concepts take longer to develop.

Patrick Mahomes is the standard for out-of-structure quarterbacking, but a lot of Mahomes’ damage is done in the pocket. Granted, that success often comes with his feet moving, but never with his eyes down. If Sanders can learn to harness his athletic instincts a bit more and show he can do damage from the pocket, chaotic or not, his stock will soar.

His athleticism is special. But the reason why Shedeur Sanders — whether you agree from your couch or not — is viewed as a potential first-round prospect in many NFL circles is because he’s incredibly accurate across the whole field, from multiple angles and positions.

On the run, across his body, from the opposite hash — Sanders can make all the throws. He did so last season, despite playing in a quick-strike attack, finishing at nearly eight air yards per attempt. That’s a yard and a half better than Nix’s 6.6 rate, in a similarly styled offense. Sanders doesn’t have jaw-dropping arm strength, but he layers throws and works on the run as well or better than anyone in America.

Among returning FBS quarterbacks with at least 300 passing attempts last season, Sanders rated third in completion rate on throws traveling 30 air yards or more. He finished fourth on that same list in completions (14 of 32). He missed a few shots, sure, but he hit plenty.

And his rapport with Travis Hunter, arguably the top WR prospect in the country, is off-the-charts good.

Sanders is certainly fortunate to have Hunter on his side. However, the rest of his supporting cast was nowhere near the talent level of what every 2024 first-round QB (Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels, Drake Maye, Michael Penix Jr., J.J. McCarthy and Nix) had last season.

That, too, has been addressed. Transfer receiver Will Sheppard (6-foot-3, 205 pounds) caught more than 150 balls at Vanderbilt and is a 2025 draft prospect. Speedster LaJohntay Wester (5-11, 167) had more than 2,500 receiving yards at Florida Atlantic and caught 108 passes last season. He’s also a legit NFL prospect.

By bulking up the depth chart and retooling its offense to better protect Sanders, Colorado could allow its quarterback to leave no doubt about what he can do. But for all the brilliant flashes in Sanders’ game, there still are large holes that exist outside of what he does against pressure — specifically, his ability to cleanly process route concepts while consistently throwing without fear over the middle.

This was a hot topic last spring, especially when it came to Daniels and Penix. The intermediate area of the field — throws between the hash marks of 10 to 22 air yards — is where a lot of damage gets done in the NFL, for both sides of the ball. A great pro quarterback can confidently layer the ball over the middle in traffic, on routes that take time to develop, without issue.

In 2023, Sanders attempted 10.8 percent of his throws to that area. (Penix was at 10.2, Daniels 9.7; the national average for starters was 11.6.)

Here’s a look at how Sanders compares against several top 2025 QB prospects in another important number: Air Yards to the Sticks, which measures how far ahead of or behind the first-down marker a throw is attempted.

Again, the offenses Sanders has played in relied on underneath stuff, and there is evidence of quality downfield pass attempts on his tape. But his number there really needs to be closer to zero — and preferably in the positive column — this season, especially if Colorado is going to budget more downfield throws into the offense. If it’s not, questions will linger about Sanders’ ability to process and throw into the most difficult area of the field.

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Pretty clearly, Shedeur Sanders has enough to be a first-round quarterback prospect, possibly even one who lands in the top half of Round 1. The 2024 draft proved, once again, how aggressive QB-desperate franchises can be if they find a player they like.

However, Sanders’ senior year at Colorado will be massively important to his actual stock come April. As noted earlier, Deion Sanders’ entire offseason plan — this year and last — revolved around making his starting quarterback as successful as possible. The additions, subtractions and changes from Year 1 to Year 2 have been almost exclusively about helping Shedeur Sanders, one of the country’s top playmakers.

But while this all, in theory, should help the QB’s cause for the 2025 draft, it also takes away basically any excuse or cover he had — he no longer will be able to blame an offense he was forced to run for any boxes he fails to check.

One way or another, over the next few months, we’ll find out who the real Shedeur Sanders is.

(Top photo: Dustin Bradford / Getty Images)