The NFL thirst for quarterbacks remains as hearty as ever, and the NFL Draft is always seen as an ideal time for teams to land a new franchise passer to help transform the fortunes of a franchise. But while 2024 was seen as a bumper crop, with six quarterbacks taken early in the first round, speaking in his annual pre draft conference call NFL Draft Analyst Daniel Jeremiah doesn’t see the 2025 class in quite the same light.

“We had six (quarterbacks) last year, [but] there’s no way you keep up to that pace,” he said. “There’s just going to be big years, and there’s going to be lean years.”

Jeremiah believes that the changes to college football, with players now eligible for Name, Likeness and Image (NIL) payments, has impacted decisions when it comes time to enter the draft, with some players choosing to exhaust their eligibility before entering the pros.

“I thought you saw a lot of guys come out when maybe they weren’t quite ready yet, and now these kids are getting paid, either by their school or somebody else,” he explained. “And, so, they have these opportunities. I think for the quarterback situation, it’s guys who would have been middle, late-round picks are easier to sell; you’re going to make more money coming back to school than you will being a fifth-round pick.”

Jeremiah feels that, despite the lack of star power at the position, a quarterback will be taken with the first overall pick, and he knows who the Tennessee Titans will take and how it will likely impact the rest of their draft.

“It sure feels like a slam dunk — I would be pretty shocked if they didn’t go with Cam Ward,” he claimed. “When you invest that first overall pick, you want that pick to look smart. It tends to lead you to staying on that side of the ball when you get to the next round.”

While Ward’s status as the first overall pick seems secure, another passer whose draft outcome is far from settled is Alabama’s Jalen Milroe. Jeremiah is impressed with Milroe as an athlete, classing him as an ‘elite, elite, elite runner’ and having ‘zero questions that he’s going to have an impact with the ball under his arm’, but feels that only with playing and learning can the Crimson Tide QB develop as a true passer, noting that he is ‘not consistently connected between his eyes and his feet’, which impacts his accuracy and leads to turnovers.

“If you want to just take a lottery ticket that you could hit huge on if it all works out and all comes together, he’s got the highest upside of anybody in this draft — and that goes all the way up to Cam Ward at No. 1,” Jeremiah insisted.

A team that is crying out for a long-term answer at quarterback is the New York Giants, but Jeremiah doesn’t necessarily see them taking a shot at the position with the third overall pick and landing a player like Shadeur Sanders, who is Jeremiah’s QB2 in this class. Instead, he thinks another player could be in play if they wanted to move back into the first round later in the evening.

“Jaxson Dart, to me, just from a fit, a little more physical, a little bit more arm — he doesn’t have a huge arm, but a little bit more arm playing in that stadium, in that division and the weather you might encounter,” he explained. “[The Giants] could conceivably come out of [their] first three picks with Abdul Carter, arguably the best player in the draft, everybody would say one of the two best players in the draft; a quarterback of the future in Jaxson Dart, who you don’t necessarily have to start right away; and then whoever you would find there in the third round. That, to me, is a really nice haul for the Giants.”