2025 NFL Draft: Which Quarterback Prospects Compare Most Closely to NFL Players? ...Middle East

We’re using our model to discover which NFL players most resembled this current batch of prospects at the time they were coming out of college.

It may not be the cleanest way to do it, but it gives a glimpse of a possible future for a player.

Or, at least, a goal for a player to reach and/or surpass.

Comparing draft prospects to NFL players is a natural part of the evaluation process. And at no position is this more prevalent than quarterback.

Every team clamors to find the next Patrick Mahomes, or Joe Burrow, or Josh Allen, or Lamar Jackson, or, in the case of the 2024 class, Jayden Daniels. There’s a chance that caliber of player doesn’t even exist in the 2025 draft class, but we can glean elements of existing NFL players given the data we have from their collegiate days.

There are two methods by which we can find examples of comparable players. 

The first is looking directly at the data compared to other players who’ve succeeded in the NFL. We’ll examine catchable-thrown rates (CTBL%) and well-thrown rate (WT%) in each prospect’s final year in college, as those two points have seen relatively high translation to the pros.

Players like Burrow, Daniels and Bo Nix both eclipsed 80% in both categories during their respective final college season and have seen early success in the league.  

The next way is mapping out college prospects using more intricate data points (including how often a player sticks to the play call, overall average depth of target, pickable pass rate, and well-thrown rate under pressure) to see how close the 2025 class is to other prospects. This is meant to show a spectrum of NFL career outcomes rather than pinpointing how well or poorly a prospect will pan out. 

For example, the 2024 class was all over the place. Daniels’ collegiate stats in this model compared most closely to Justin Fields, Lamar Jackson, Malik Willis and Kyler Murray. That’s a wide range, and Daniels ended up (so far) surpassing all but Jackson.

Caleb Williams, meanwhile, closely resembled Zach Wilson and Drake Maye was in the Sam Ehlinger/Hendon Hooker/DeShone Kizer range. Nix fell closest to Mac Jones, Tommy DeVito, Davis Mills and Bailey Zappe.

Both methods provide a way to articulate a possible NFL future. Neither are ironclad.

OK. Here we go.

With the exceptions of Rattler (who wasn’t good as a rookie), Jones (who was good for one season) and McCarthy (who hasn’t played yet), there are a lot of quality players on this list.

Burrow, Daniels and Nix are the top three, but Burrow is the only one with multiple years of success. Mayfield and Murray have been up and down, but both have leveled out as solid NFL starters, while Purdy has come on strong as a seventh-round rookie.

Now, let’s compare just college CTBL% with what actually happened in the NFL. A lot of the same names emerge as quality NFL players (Burrow, Daniels and Nix), but there are a few surprises that show both developmental and situational factors can’t be discounted.

There are outliers on either side of the spectrum here, and Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen is the biggest. He had a low CTBL% in college and an abysmal 71.7 CTBL% during his first NFL season. Coaching corrected that, and now Allen is the reigning league MVP.

On the other end is Mac Jones (again), who was incredibly accurate in college, made the Pro Bowl as a rookie before coaching upheaval with the New England Patriots changed everything. His CTBL% rose just 0.67% over his career, and now he’s a backup on his third team with the San Francisco 49ers.

What do we learn from all this? Skill matters, but sometimes situation and coaching can matter more. 

There are clear and tangible takeaways from this chart, highlighted by the clear clusters of quarterbacks. Daniels has been sensational, while players like Burrow, Murray and Tua Tagovailoa have all been solid in the pros after beginning their careers as good NFL prospects.

The middle of the chart features young players or ones with a lot of roster turmoil (Justin Herbert, for example), while the bottom features either struggling players (Daniel Jones) or ones who’ve since become great NFL quarterbacks (like Allen and Jackson)

So, where do the 2025 prospects fit in here? Shedeur Sanders, Will Howard and Dillon Gabriel would rank relatively high among prospects since 2016 in both metrics. Jaxson Dart and Cam Ward are both close but not quite up to the same level as the other three.

This is, again, one way to look at the possible NFL future. But it isn’t the end-all-be-all. 

Here are the results from our collegiate prospect model with the headliners in this upcoming class and their closest comparable players. We looked exclusively at which prospects saw NFL snaps.

Think of this more as a range of outcomes rather than an apples-to-apples comparison. It also should be noted these are not direct NFL comparisons: We are comparing prospects to prospects, and how they turned into NFL players isn’t always indicative. However, we can make assertions based on how they performed in the NFL. 

For instance, Purdy was a seventh-round pick and wasn’t a highly coveted prospect. He only turned into a star after being given the opportunity to start following two season-ending injuries in San Francisco. The opposite can be said for Mitchell Trubisky and Dwayne Haskins, who were both highly regarded first-round picks put into bad situations and ended up not performing well.

If we take these two evaluation methods, it’s clear to see the trio of Ward, Sanders and Dart remain the best quarterback options in the 2025 class. Ward and Dart don’t have better advanced metrics than Sanders, Howard and Gabriel, but they have the traits that compare favorable to another good prospect. There’s Ward to Burrow, who we know is a good outcome, and Dart to Maye, who looks promising after one season in the NFL.

Meanwhile, Sanders’ closest comparable prospect is currently the Bengals’ backup quarterback. Browning, however, did look decent when he stepped in for Burrow for seven games in 2023.

Everything will boil down to each player’s situation, too. Ward will likely head to one of the Tennessee Titans, Cleveland Browns or New York Giants, while Sanders and Dart could land anywhere on the board at this point. That will matter initially but could also change if the coaching staff or roster changes around them, as it did with Allen.

How badly a team wants a quarterback could dictate where they end up as well. Some teams want a player to start in Week 1, while others are willing to wait a few weeks or a year before plugging them into a system.

April’s draft will determine their fates. But for now, this is the closest we’ll get to projecting each quarterback’s respective NFL futures.

Opta Analyst’s Greg Gifford contributed. For more coverage, follow us on social media on Instagram, Bluesky, Facebook and X.

2025 NFL Draft: Which Quarterback Prospects Compare Most Closely to NFL Players? Opta Analyst.

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