Early position grades for the 2025 NFL Draft: Down year for QBs, WRs stand out, No. 1 contenders at EDGE, CB
Early position grades for the 2025 NFL Draft: Down year for QBs, WRs stand out, No. 1 contenders at EDGE, CB CBS Sports
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The 2024 NFL Draft: Early Position Grades for the 2025 NFL Draft
The 2024 NFL Draft is in the books. In many ways it was historic, with six quarterbacks going off the board in the first 12 picks — the fastest we’ve ever seen.
Watching the run on quarterbacks made me think NFL teams had already done their due diligence on the 2025 class of draft-eligible quarterbacks, which is not as good. And that gave me the idea to project way-too-early positional grades for the 2025 NFL Draft.
As a devourer of college football film (I ranked my top 100 players two weeks ago for CBSSports.com), I absolutely love putting my name on early projections a year out. This complements my way-too-early mock draft.
Quarterback: C+
There’s no Caleb Williams or even Bryce Young in this class. It’s a pretty deep group, but we’ll have to see this fall if any player emerges as a top-end, franchise-level quarterback. Fourteen quarterbacks made my ranking of the top 100 players in college football and I have fifteen others on my watch list. The overall consensus is Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders, Texas‘ Quinn Ewers and Georgia’s Carson Beck are likely to be the first three off the board but all of them have lots of questions to be answered this season. I’m not sleeping on Alabama’s Jalen Milroe, either, and actually have him as the second quarterback selected in 2025. His skillset as a runner gives him the potential for a Jayden Daniels-type leap this fall, plus he’ll be coached up by Kalen DeBoer, who turned Michael Penix Jr. from damaged goods to top-10 pick.
Nobody would have had Bo Nix as a Round 1 pick a year ago, which means there’s a huge opportunity this fall for guys like Miami’s Cameron Ward, LSU’s Garrett Nussmeier and Ole Miss’ Jaxson Dart to crash the conversation.
Running Back: A-
Solid year for some top-end backs who could find their way into the first round. I’ve got 12 backs on my top 100; three of them won’t be draft-eligible in 2025. Ohio State’s Quinshon Judkins has a really good shot of going in the first round. Oklahoma State’s Ollie Gordon and Ohio State’s cbssports.com
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