Joel Klatt explains why Shedeur Sanders is the top QB in 2025 NFL Draft

The 2025 NFL Draft class won’t feature the strongest or deepest quarterback class, but there’s still some elite talent. Colorado gunslinger Shedeur Sanders is an intriguing prospect that could well be the first quarterback selected.

At least, if FOX Sports analyst Joel Klatt had any say in the matter, Sanders would be the top selection.

“My No. 1 quarterback available in this year’s NFL Draft is Shedeur Sanders from Colorado,” Klatt said on his podcast. “Shedeur is excellent. I think he is a phenomenal player. He is equal parts — and if you heard me talk about him and it was during the games I called this year and/or even in that first mock draft — he is equal parts surgeon and artist. And that’s one of the reasons why I love his game and I think it’s translatable to the National Football League.”

Shedeur Sanders is coming off a season in which he threw for a career best 4,134 yards with 37 touchdowns against just 10 interceptions. He also ran for four scores.

Perhaps most importantly, he showed off the kind of skills he brings to the table.

“When he needs to be he can be a surgeon and he can just sit in the pocket and dice people up,” Klatt said. “He anticipates as well as anybody in this draft. He’s hyper-accurate, so he’s got that ability to just be the prototypical pocket guy, dicing you up down the field, intermediate zones, driving the football, throwing with touch and then taking easy throws on the outside as well, or even in the middle of the field.

“So he’s got that surgeon capability, command capability that you would want to see from your NFL starting quarterback.”

That’s not the only thing Shedeur Sanders brings to the table, though. He can certainly play within a team’s offensive structure, but he definitely doesn’t have to.

“He also has something more, and this is why he’s my No. 1 player, he’s got this ability to be an artist,” Klatt explained. “So Shedeur does an amazing job of creating when things aren’t there, which he had to do quite a bit, by the way, because of who he played for. Remember now, this Colorado team when he arrived with his dad and some of his other teammates, they were a one-win team from the previous season. One win. And he’s leaving there a nine-win team, they were in the race for the Big 12 Championship Game.

“They do not get to that point without Shedeur Sanders. I understand that Travis Hunter won the Heisman Trophy. I get it. But the entire turnaround from an on-field perspective was about Shedeur Sanders. If you don’t have a quarterback, you don’t get to do what Colorado was able to do the last couple of years.”

That turnaround that Shedeur Sanders helped lead at Colorado is something a lot of NFL teams will love. It shows he has the ability to really move the needle.

Klatt pointed to that as perhaps the key factor in Sanders being his No. 1 quarterback prospect.

“So now we’ve seen him, which is by the way the case of what he’s going to be asked to do at the next level, which is take an organization, take a program in this case with Colorado, but an organization now in the future that is struggling, that’s falling way below expectations, and raise the level of the team just because you’re playing quarterback,” Klatt said.

“He’s already done that. So why is he my No. 1 quarterback? He has proven exactly what he needs to do at the next level: raise the level of the entire organization, the entire team, the offense, everyone around him. He’s already done that.”