By Mark Pszonak
The monumental fall by Shedeur Sanders during the 2025 NFL Draft is something that will be discussed for years, especially if he proves that he belongs in the league. However, another interesting draft situation happened on Saturday that also needs to be discussed.
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Quinn Ewers received extreme levels of hype coming out of high school, which followed him to Texas after his transfer from Ohio State. With the Longhorns, he passed for 9,128 yards and 68 touchdowns while leading his team to a 25-5 record over the last two seasons.
Graham Mertz also entered the college game with a good amount of hype, but not at the level of Ewers. He signed with Wisconsin, where he spent three seasons before transferring to Florida for his final two. In Gainesville he only played in 16 games, with a torn ACL cutting his 2024 season down to five games. During that time, he passed for 3,694 yards, 26 touchdowns and five interceptions, while leading the Gators to a 7-9 record.
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Coming into the 2024 season, Ewers was discussed as a first-round draft pick, while Mertz had hardly been a blip on the draft radar. That blip faded even further after his torn ACL. Yet yesterday, Mertz was selected ahead of Ewers and only 11 picks after National Championship winning quarterback Will Howard.
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If reports were correct from a few months ago, Ewers had an option to stay in college for one more season and get upwards of $6M via NIL. Instead, he was drafted in the seventh round by the Miami Dolphins where he will receive a four-year contract totaling between $4.31M and $4.33M.
Financially, Ewers’ wallet took a hard hit, but in the long run this could work in his favor. Tua Tagovailoa is the Dolphins starter, but as everyone who pays attention to the NFL knows, he is also extremely susceptible to injury. That leaves Ewers battling Zach Wilson for the backup job in Miami, which suddenly puts him in a favorable position to be a starter in the league before many of the other quarterbacks selected ahead of him.
And starting quarterbacks in the NFL make much, much more than $6M a year. The last few days didn’t go as expected for Ewers, but in a few years it may be proven that it was the best case scenario for the former Longhorn.
