NFL Analysis
10/18/24
9 min read
Quinn Ewers Losing Ground (And Time) In 2025 NFL Draft Arms Race
The script of the 2024 college football season and the start of the 2025 draft cycle have had their fair share of surprises. It was generally accepted during the summer months that this year’s quarterback class would be a unique one, with some talented passers with holes in their game, like Shedeur Sanders and Drew Allar, and, conversely, productive passers with questionable tools, like Carson Beck and Quinn Ewers.
The first two months of the college football season have clarified a number of these talents and even seen a handful more emerge from obscurity to bolster the potential candidates further to go at or near the top of the draft — names like Garrett Nussmeier and Cameron Ward have exploded onto the scene to remodel the perception of the class.
As the season’s games have played out, we’ve also begun to see separation within the group. Some quarterbacks, like Ward and Sanders, are putting up monster numbers while simultaneously showcasing the ability to win outside of structure and refining the questions that lingered about their games.
The same can be said for Allar and Jalen Milroe, both of which are physically gifted passers who have harnessed another level of consistency in their games.
And then there’s Quinn Ewers.
Ewers has been a buzzy name in the NFL Draft conversation for quite a while now, understandably so as a former 5-star recruit and the No. 1 target in all the country. Ewers stopped at Ohio State for the briefest of cameos before transferring to the Longhorns program. As a redshirt freshman in 2022, he breathed some lift into Texas with a terrific 4-touchdown performance against Oklahoma. But his play faltered down the stretch.
Ewers spent the offseason before 2023 cleaning up his diet and trimming more than 15 pounds off his frame to add more mobility to his game — and it was a big part of his next signature win.
Ewers led the Longhorns to a road win in Tuscaloosa in 2023 against the Crimson Tide, kickstarting the team's run to the College Football Playoff. It also led to a bigger sample size of 5-star throwing talent to increase his profile as a player and the expectation that he could become a top quarterback prospect for the pros.
On the surface, the resume appears plentiful:
- 5-star talent
- Signature wins against elite competition
- Helped elevate a program to annual national championship contender
- Now plays with enough athleticism to extend plays and get outside the pocket
- Big production playing at the highest levels of college football
But in looking under the hood of Ewers’ profile and closely examining him with the same microscope teams will, I’m not sure everything is what it seems. And Ewers is now running out of time for 2025 to change the narrative.
>> READ MORE: Latest 2025 NFL Mock Draft
Ewers' Injury Woes
The best trait for any football player is availability. You can’t win your team football games if you’re sidelined by injury. And Ewers has now had three injuries that have resulted in missed games in three seasons.
He missed two games and change with an oblique strain earlier this season, making it back in time for the Oklahoma contest this past weekend. Back in 2022, Ewers missed three and a half games after taking a crushing blow against Alabama that drove his left shoulder into the ground.
In 2023, Ewers suffered an AC joint sprain in his shoulder against Houston that cost him another two and a half games. This creates a troubling trend when you cross-reference it with his stature and style of play.
Ewers is listed at 6-foot-2, 210 pounds, after that well-documented weight cut to 195 pounds in 2023. It is certainly big enough to play quarterback in the NFL, but it isn’t big. According to NFL Combine database Mockdraftable, a 6-foot-2 quarterback would be in the 32nd percentile, and a 210-pound quarterback would be in the 14th percentile for an NFL passer in the database’s sample size, which ranges from 1999 to the present day.
As someone with a documented list of injuries across three seasons, you can rest assured that NFL teams are going to put Ewers, his frame, and his ability to protect himself under the microscope.
Ewers isn’t the type of quarterback to concede on many plays. The thirst for passers who win outside of structure has been driven to unparalleled levels thanks to the successes of NFL stars like Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, and Lamar Jackson.
However, not every quarterback is created equally in this regard, and there are few things more dangerous than a quarterback who lacks awareness of what he is and isn’t. This goes for play results and protecting yourself on the field.
Ewers is not particularly dynamic as an athlete, and the combination of an unwillingness to yield plays, a modest frame, and a lack of significant twitch or speed have prompted Ewers to take some big hits. This should be a big question for NFL teams if Ewers decides to throw his hat into the ring for the 2025 NFL Draft.
Lapped By The Field
So, too, should be the frustrating lack of growth and consistency. The draft space has been hopeful to see him make the leaps and bounds we’ve seen this season from Ward, Milroe, and others. It hasn’t happened.
There were some hints of growth earlier this season, his third in coach Steve Sarkisian’s system. Eye manipulation showed up in the first few games of the season, suggesting Ewers had a better level of trust in where his receivers were and that he was seeing the field at a high level.
Then, he played the UTSA game, which featured a baffling early interception in which Ewers was forced to stand in the pocket and wait for things to develop. He looked uncomfortable and eventually slingshotted an errant throw between the hook and the flat — directly to a UTSA defender.
In his return against Oklahoma, Ewers missed multiple throws in the first quarter that should have been routine pitch and catch plays. He missed a wide-open in with the hook defender having driven towards an underneath route on his first play before looking to scramble, flushing directly into an edge rusher on the fringe of the pocket and eventually taking a sack.
Ewers’ interception in the first quarter came on another big one, with no defender within five yards of the receiver. Oklahoma vacated the entire middle of the field as the No. 3 receiver ran vertically straight through the heart of the defense. Ewers sailed the throw for an interception by the deep-half safety.
QUINN EWERS PICK TO START THE GAME 😬
— The SEC Scoop (@TheSECScoop) October 12, 2024
Billy Bowman Jr. gives OU the ball on the opening drive 🔥#OUDNA #Oklahoma
pic.twitter.com/chwvfZvIfq
Could this be rust? Perhaps. However, the larger body of work, including returning to the 2022 and 2023 seasons, suggests that this is more of a part of Ewers' identity as a passer. It is easy to be delighted by Ewers’ ability to get throws out quickly and with a snappy release that adjusts to available throwing windows.
Still, these reps routinely lead to inaccurate throws that should be routine completions. The variance of throws to open receivers is a concern, and I believe the issue was masked for much of Ewers’ tenure at Texas by the supporting cast he’s been blessed with playing at a powerhouse. Consider the 2023 Longhorns depth chart.
Wide receivers Xavier Worthy and Adonai Mitchell were top-55 draft selections this past April. Fellow wide receiver Jordan Whittington was a Day 3 choice for the Rams and looks like a valuable role player. TE Ja’Tavion Sanders was the 101st pick, and RB Jonathon Brooks went 46th overall.
While the offensive line was primarily retained for this season, OT Christian Jones was a fifth-round draft choice, and current LT Kelvin Banks Jr. is in consideration for the No. 1 tackle in the 2025 class. Ewers has all of that support while playing with one of the best playcallers in the country.
How much of Texas’ offensive success has actually been driven by Ewers?
Is Ewers Texas' Best QB?
Things got exceedingly muddy in Ewers’ latest absence when sophomore Arch Manning stepped in and looked like a better player. Manning will have his own story to write, but I’m not convinced Ewers is even the best quarterback on his team. When you expand that look to include the other eligible talent for the 2025 class, it is fair to question where exactly Ewers stacks among his peers.
It isn’t just the missed throws, either. It’s how Texas is playing with Ewers at the helm. To date, Ewers has attempted 108 passes this season — 38 percent of those attempts have come behind the line of scrimmage.
Sixty percent of them are within five yards of the line of scrimmage. And that number grows to 74 percent when expanded to within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage. In contrast, Ewers’ pass attempts inside five and 10 yards were 10 percent lower in 2023. Manning’s performance this season in the same offense saw 12 percent less of his attempts stay within 10 air yards of the line of scrimmage.
Texas is playing much of its passing game within a confined box with Ewers and scheming some RPO throws and easy completions to get things going.
Two weeks ago, I assembled a list of my top 10 quarterbacks eligible for the 2025 draft and ranked Ewers seventh. Among those 10 passers, Ewers ranks last in passer rating on throws 10+ air yards downfield this season.
Time is of the essence.
Don’t look now, but it is the middle of October. The Longhorns host Georgia this weekend in the most high-profile contest on Texas’ schedule. Ewers offered a good performance against Michigan earlier in the year, but his needle-moving opportunities are dwindling in the regular season schedule.
If Ewers will ultimately live up to the buzz he's been granted across the past several seasons, the time to make a leap in play is right now. There's no room left for rusty starts and hasty, errant throws. The missed opportunities and off-schedule miscues need to be lessened.
If not, Ewers' resume will be headlined by his natural throwing ability, his raw production on college's biggest stage, and some signature wins during his time with Texas.
However, the rest of the resume will leave far too many holes for a quarterback to be coveted highly relative to his peers — even in a 2025 NFL Draft class filled with quarterbacks with incomplete resumes.
