The 2025 NFL Draft will be here before we know it. Though we have a ways to go to get through the 2024 college football regular season, there’s no better time than now to start to take a look at which quarterbacks dominate the top of the QB board in terms of next-level talent.
The following 2025 NFL Draft QB Rankings are headlined by the growth of Cam Ward from Miami.
2025 Draft QB Rankings, 1-10
We’ve looked at these quarterbacks as college football prospects for some time now here at College Football Network. And though these Draft QB rankings will look a bit different than our college football QB rankings, one thing is for sure: We know what these quarterbacks have brought to the table during their college careers, and now we’re piecing together what they’ll take with them to the NFL eventually.
The list of top 10 2025 NFL Draft QBs is evolving, but we’re pretty certain who belongs at the top.
10) Kyle McCord, Syracuse
Before the season, we sort of knew what Kyle McCord had in his arsenal. However, following a terrific start to his Syracuse career, McCord’s toolbox is bigger than anticipated, and he’s wowed in the process.
McCord may not have the strongest arm in college football, nor on this list, but he’s starting to understand where and when to pick his shots. His biggest downfall, at this time, is his play against pressure.
If he can improve his decision-making, both on the fly and from a clean pocket, McCord can prove himself worthy of running an NFL offense.
9) Will Howard, Ohio State
His awareness at the end of the Oregon game notwithstanding, Will Howard has looked like your prototypical NFL QB since he took over back at Kansas State. He has great upside at the next level due to his football acumen and his ability to make those “NFL throws” with ease.
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Howard is hardly an elevator of talent at this stage of his career, unfortunately, so he’s likely limited in his NFL prospects to right where he is, but he certainly has all the tools at his disposal to make the move to the professional level relatively easy.
He has plenty of moxie and even more leadership qualities, but he’ll be defined by his play on the field in terms of his ability to eventually become a starting NFL quarterback.
8) Garrett Nussmeier, LSU
With one of the livest arms in football, Garrett Nussmeier cracks the top 10 in his first season as a starter. The LSU Tigers QB has made a multitude of throws in the 2024 season that look like a clear-cut first-round pick, but there have also been some issues that show inconsistency had room to grow.
For Nussmeier, it’s about playing better from within the structure of the offense and finding his outs faster. If he can improve his play from within the pocket and make better progressive reads, the Tigers will win the majority of their remaining games, and he’ll vault his draft stock even higher.
The nice thing for Nussmeier in the 2024 season is the fact that there will be a ton of NFL eyes on him as scouts are there to watch his left tackle, Will Campbell, do his thing. Nussmeier has to bring it every game.
7) Drew Allar, Penn State
With a massive arm and an incredible pro-style ability, Drew Allar may be the safest projection of next-level talent in this whole group. Yet, it feels like Allar hasn’t been fully unleashed as a downfield passer while at Penn State, so there could be more unknown to his game than on the surface.
Allar has an incredible arm. He’ll fit footballs into the tightest of windows at the blink of an eye. But he struggles with consistency with his reads and plays woeful football, at times, under duress.
Those inconsistencies, however, are far and few between. When Allar is able to stand tall, he delivers more often than not. He has plenty of arm talent to every level of the field, but he may have the best downfield arm in terms of lasering ability to pinpoint his targets deep down the field, we just haven’t seen enough of it.
6) Jaxson Dart, Ole Miss
There’s an innate ability to lead, elevate talent, and trust in his receivers that Jaxson Dart presents more so than any other quarterback on this list. Dart can drop his passes into closing windows against zone, find soft spots and make progressive reads against shell defenses, but what sets him apart is his ability to spot man coverage, find his preferred matchup, and trust his receiver to come down with a 50-50 ball that he gives an advantage to.
To put it plainly, Dart makes plays.
There is very little not to like about Dart’s game, but if you had to nitpick, it’s his ability to maintain vision downfield as he attempts to create far too often and has some ball security issues. Forcing the ball into single coverage against NFL CBs won’t last him too long in the NFL, so he’ll have to rely on the rest of his skills to propel him through his NFL career.
5) Quinn Ewers, Texas
Quinn Ewers has a dominance to his game, but he comes with injury concerns, obviously. Ewers has the documented ability to find his open receivers against any type of coverage, and plays equally well against pressure or from clean pockets.
He’s a clean operator from the pocket when given time to assess defenses and coverage and has plenty of arm talent to find every level of the field. What Ewers possesses is a gritty, willing-to-leave-it-all-on-the-field mantra that will win him the hearts of his future NFL fanbase.
The next step for Ewers is proving he can stay healthy for a full season and showing better consistency with his decision-making along the boundary. But that’s just nitpicking at this time.
4) Carson Beck, Georgia
He’ll incorrectly be labeled as a game manager for any who haven’t actually spent time watching Carson Beck, because he does just that, while doing so much more. Beck has a live arm, perhaps at his best when he’s forced to throw from his spot atop the pocket and deliver tight-window strikes across the field.
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Beck can push the ball on a rope downfield or take something off and layer brilliantly over second-level defenders all the same. The benefit of playing quarterback at Georgia is the fact that Beck likely doesn’t have to be a world-beater at all times, and thus, that’s where the mis-monikered ‘game manager’ comes from.
Beck is an elevator of talent and shown to be a versatile athlete with the ball in his hands. He may lack some creation capacity from within the pocket, but he’s no slouch when it comes to just about everything else an NFL QB needs to be able to do.
3) Jalen Milroe, Alabama
The most athletic quarterback on this list, Jalen Milroe has both the strongest arm and perhaps the most gifted set of athletic abilities from a QB we’ve seen in some time, and that includes last year’s No. 1 overall pick Caleb Williams. The only problem in Milroe’s prospects at this time is the fact that his howitzer is without much of a tracking system from the 10-19-yard range.
If Milroe can start to increase his accuracy to the short and intermediate range, his portfolio will be complete. Until then, he’s got some development work ahead of him, but Milroe can bank on his athletic gifts being enough to speed past linebackers in the SEC or NFL, and his arm strength enough to rocket past defenders to his receivers with a step or less of separation.
2) Cam Ward, Miami-FL
Cam Ward rockets up the top 10 NFL Draft quarterbacks after his tremendous start to the 2024 college football season. No quarterback has helped their draft stock in 2024 more than Ward, as he’s showcased the fact that he can hit every level of the field with accuracy and anticipation.
But for Ward, it’s his arm angles and the way he manipulates the pocket to find easy throwing lanes that sets him apart from almost everyone in this class. No play is ever off limits with Ward in the backfield as he can unleash an accurate pass from a dead sprint to his left side or concoct his arm to find his target from a collapsing pocket.
Ward’s lone issue throughout his collegiate journey was turnovers, and he’s nearly put that to bed in 2024 with Miami. The sky is the limit and there is no denying Ward’s overall talent at the quarterback position after the first half of the season.
1) Shedeur Sanders, Colorado
For now, Shedeur Sanders is undoubtedly the top quarterback for the 2025 NFL Draft. Colorado’s starting quarterback has done more than his fair share of elevating the talent around him in 2024, elevating his own game in the process.
Sanders has showcased what he can do when he’s not pressured on what felt like 70% of his dropbacks last year. He’s been brilliant from within the structure of the offense, but perhaps no quarterback in the past two-year window of college football has shown what they can do under duress more than Sanders.
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And Sanders’ play under pressure is some of the best quarterbacking we’ve seen, at least in 2024. With pressure coming in, Sanders will break contain, maintain vision downfield, and find the right time to uncork his cannon of an arm to a streaking receiver in a dominant display of backyard football.
The trust and rapport he’s built with his receivers at Colorado will be tough to replace, but within a few weeks time at his NFL stop, that should return and he should be good to go in no time at the next level.
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