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Welcome to one of the best nights in sports: the NFL draft. While most anticipate the Tennessee Titans selecting Miami quarterback Cam Ward at No. 1, the rest of the first round is anyone’s guess.
Who will trade up or down? Will the Cleveland Browns add their quarterback of the future or take a player like two-way star Travis Hunter or dominant defensive end Abdul Carter?
That and more will be answered shortly. NBC News will have you covered all night from Green Bay with pick-by-pick analysis in real time.
Location: Lambeau Field, Green Bay, Wisc.
Time: Thursday at 8 p.m. E.T.
How to watch: The event will be broadcast on ABC, ESPN and the NFL Network. You can stream on ESPN+, NFL+, Hulu+ and YouTubeTV.
Sanders is sure to draw a lot of intrigue and interest wherever he does land. Though he’s seemingly not a sure bet to go in the first round, there is one popular destination for the son of Hall-of-Famer Deion Sanders: The Pittsburgh Steelers.
ESPN and Sharp Football both have the Steelers selecting Sanders with the 21st pick in the first round, though Dvorchak, The Ringer and Yahoo disagree. (Yahoo’s Charles McDonald and Nate Tice notably have Pittsburgh taking Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe.)
The lack of clarity on Sanders is instructive of this draft as a whole. Outside of Ward, there doesn’t seem to be a quarterback that everyone can agree on.
At the same time, teams often get desperate when it comes to finding a player at the sport’s most important position. That means whether it’s Sanders, Milroe or someone else, one organization could be taking a massive swing whenever the second quarterback of the draft is ultimately selected.
Players hoping to hear their name called during the NFL draft understand that a successful fall season is a necessary component. But once the college season ends, another begins: draft season, where running a fast 40-yard dash or nailing an interview with a team at February’s combine can be just as valuable.
Inside the NFL, there is a belief that even though that evaluation process is exhaustive, it’s not perfect. Scott Pioli, an NFL Network analyst and former general manager in Kansas City, said that “we measure and evaluate certain things that aren’t always the right things or the relevant things.”
One longtime NFL executive, who has been involved in player scouting and spoke on the condition of anonymity, agreed with Pioli’s assessment.
“A bad interview of one player will carry weight all the way through the draft,” said the executive.
“Well, anybody can struggle in 15 minutes with people they don’t know. Instead of evaluating the true nature of what makes guys successful — and it’s their grittiness and their toughness and their passion and their competitiveness and how they approach the game mentally — that gets lost a little bit in some of the other stuff all spring.”
The decision to pick Ward with the first pick would likely spell the end for Will Levis, the former second-round pick whose mercurial career hasn’t lived up to expectations.
Once seen as a possible lottery pick, Levis slid into the top of the second round during the 2023 draft. But the Titans traded up to get him, and they were hoping the big-armed former Kentucky Wildcat could solve their issues at the position.
Levis has been injury-plagued his first two years in the league, showing signs of the strong armed and deceptively mobile player he was in college but also struggling mightily with turnovers and accuracy.
It’s unclear whether the Titans plan to trade him, and it’s possible he could benefit from a change of scenery and a step out of the spotlight that comes with being a starting NFL quarterback. But you don’t draft a quarterback first overall without a commitment to making him your franchise quarterback.
And that leaves Levis as the odd man out.
The NFL originally announced 17 prospects would attend the draft in Green Bay. A day later came a report that Kentucky cornerback Maxwell Hairston also would join them.
The final total is 15 prospects on-site.
It previously was reported that Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart and Georgia defensive end Mykel Williams had decided against going. Ohio State offensive tackle Josh Simmons also didn’t end up taking the trip to Wisconsin.
New York seems to be in a bit of a swing position with the third pick of the first round. There’s an overwhelming likelihood Ward and Colorado star Travis Hunter will go with the first two picks.
The Giants, meanwhile, have been a rumored spot for Hunter’s collegiate teammate Shedeur Sanders, who told NBC News earlier this month that no quarterback would be better prepared to handle the New York spotlight than him.
But the Sanders-Giants hype may be more wishful thinking than anything else.
Dvorchak, ESPN, The Ringer, Sharp Football and Yahoo all have New York taking Penn State defensive end Abdul Carter third overall. While the Giants need help all over the roster, New York deciding to forego a quarterback could speak to the lack of faith in passing prospects in this year’s class.
New York is seemingly set at the QB position in the short term after signing Jameis Winston and Russell Wilson this offseason. But as the saying goes, if you have two quarterbacks, then you have none.
Brad Thomas and Vaughn Dalzell break down the Chicago Bears’ first round pick and identify which positions the team should look into to help Caleb Williams, including the tight end market.
The 2024 NFL draft saw a run on quarterbacks during the first round. That isn’t expected to be the case in 2025, in what could be one of the position’s lightest draft classes.
The number of quarterbacks drafted in the first round, since 2000:
2000: 1
2001: 2
2002: 3
2003: 4
2004: 4
2005: 3
2006: 3
2007: 2
2008: 2
2009: 3
2010: 2
2011: 4
2012: 4
2013: 1
2014: 3
2015: 2
2016: 3
2017: 3
2018: 5
2019: 3
2020: 4
2021: 5
2022: 1
2023: 3
2024: 6
For most of the 2024 college football season, Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders was the betting favorite to be the first overall pick in the 2025 NFL draft. Now it appears he could fall all the way to the Steelers at No. 21. Or perhaps even further than that.
The Steelers are now the favorites to draft Sanders at DraftKings, FanDuel and other sports books. And they might not have to trade up to get him, as Sanders is now a +320 underdog to go in the Top 10.
Could Sanders fall even further than No. 21? It’s possible, if the Steelers aren’t high on him. In fact, there’s an increasing number of bets on Sanders falling all the way out of the first round: At ESPN Bet, Sanders’ odds of going in the second round moved to -120 this morning.
Former UNC running back Omarion Hampton joins Chris Simms and Ahmed Fareed to shed light on his draft preparations, what NFL teams like about his game, and how former Tar Heels have acted as mentors for him.
Rohan Nadkarni is a sports reporter for NBC News.
Andrew Greif is a freelance sports journalist.
Greg Rosenstein is the sports editor for NBC News Digital.
Ben Kamisar is a national political reporter for NBC News
Connor Rogers is a host and analyst for NBC Sports.
© 2025 NBCUniversal Media, LLC
NFL draft 2025 live updates: Cam Ward expected to go No. 1 as Titans' first pick in Round 1 – NBC News
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