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Shedeur Sanders seems confident he will be the top pick of the 2025 NFL Draft, but not all scouts are on the same page.
According to NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero, some scouts aren’t projecting Sanders as a Round 1 pick following his senior season at Colorado.
“I’ve already talked to people within the league who don’t have anything close to a first-round grade on the guy,” Pelissero said about Sanders on Friday’s episode of the Rich Eisen Show.
Pelissero continued: “The idea that he’s just going to walk in and going to be the No. 1 pick, that’s probably pushing it… if I were guessing who comes off the board first, I’d say Shedeur is not the first Colorado player off the board as it stands today.”
Sanders wrapped up his final season with Colorado last Saturday with a bowl game loss to BYU.
The quarterback said ahead of the game that his cleats would reflect where he was going in the upcoming NFL draft.
He then arrived to face BYU in custom New York Giants cleats. At the time the Giants, who have since slipped behind the Tennessee Titans in the race to the bottom of the league standings, were on track to select first in the draft.
Pelissero said that while Sanders going No. 1 could still happen, there was “healthy skepticism among people in the league” that one of the bottom finishers would use their top pick on the Colorado signal caller.
Sanders’ case for No. 1 likely wasn’t helped by his performance against BYU, during which he struggled with three sacks in the first half.
As B/R NFL Scout Dame Parson wrote in his report on Sanders, the Colorado quarterback is a strong passer from the pocket, but may struggle to sustain the number of hits he takes with the Buffaloes at the NFL level.
The loss to BYU also marked the final college outing for Sanders’ teammate and reigning Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter, who played for the Buffaloes at both cornerback and wide receiver this season.
Hunter is also a candidate for the No. 1 pick, something he previously said was even more important to him than winning the Heisman.
There’s a chance that, should a team like the Giants or Tennessee Titans end up at the top of the draft, they will want to use their pick to select a quarterback regardless of the best overall prospect available.
Even with Hunter out of the picture in that case, Sanders would have to compete with other top quarterback prospects including Miami’s Cam Ward to hear his name called first this spring.
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