NFL Draft
3/3/25
7 min read
Tyler Shough 2025 NFL Draft: Scouting Report For Louisville Cardinals QB
Height: 6047 (verified)
Weight: 219lbs (verified)
Year: Seventh-Year Senior
Pro Comparison: Josh McCown
Scouting Overview
Louisville Cardinals quarterback Tyler Shough projects as a toolsy, mature developmental quarterback who, in the right environment, could serve as a viable bridge quarterback. He’s seen a lot of football, thanks to a laundry list of season-ending injuries that preserved his college eligibility. Still, he enjoyed a productive final season during his one and only year at Louisville.
Shough is a fluid athlete with notable arm talent, but his durability and decision-making under pressure loom as threats that could prevent him from ever living up to his potential behind center.
2025 NFL Combine Results
| Position | Name | School | 40-Yard Dash | 10-Yard Split | Broad Jump | Vertical Jump | 3-Cone Drill | 20-Yard Shuttle | Bench Press |
| QB | Tyler Shough | Louisville | 4.63 | 1.61 | 117 | 32 |
Positives
- Smooth delivery allows him to comfortably zip the ball from a slew of release points and platforms
- Boasts good arm strength to throw with velocity and attack tight window areas
- Shows comfort attacking holes against zone coverage with timing to hit run throughs in stride
Negatives
- Can make poor decisions against free runners and put the football up in the air recklessly
- Only really posted one season of prominent production and will turn 26 years old in September of his rookie season
- Surreal list of medical flags — multiple shoulder injuries and a broken fibula helped fuel a 7-year college career
Background
Shough has had perhaps the most round-about path to the 2025 NFL Draft. He’s from Chandler, AZ, and played high school football at Hamilton HS. There, he was a two-year starter who earned a 4-star recruitment ranking (247 Sports) and offers from schools like Alabama, Michigan, and Georgia. Though he initially declared to play at North Carolina, he decommitted and enrolled at Oregon as a member of their 2018 recruiting class.
Shough redshirted his true freshman season in 2018 after appearing in three games and backed up QB Justin Herbert for Herbert’s final season in Eugene in 2019. He was the team’s starting quarterback in the COVID-19 pandemic season of 2020 and helped to lead the Ducks to the PAC-12 Championship game and an appearance in the Fiesta Bowl. But his grip on the team’s starting quarterback role was in question by the end of the year.
As a result, Shough entered the transfer portal after three seasons with the Ducks. He committed to Texas Tech and won the team’s starting job entering the 2021 season. He was injured with a broken collarbone and missed the remainder of the season. In 2022, Shough returned and was once again named the team’s starter — although he lasted just one quarter in the season opener before another shoulder injury shelved him until late October. His return did spur the Raiders to win their final four games of the season.
Shough returned for a sixth year of eligibility, thanks to his true redshirt season and the COVID-19 exemption, but lasted just four games before a broken fibula ended his season and required surgery.
Shough entered the transfer portal for the second time amid the medical exemption and landed at Louisville, where he finally put together a fully healthy campaign in 2024. Shough went 8-4 as a starter, passing for more than 3,100 yards and 23 touchdowns.
His career ended with an accepted invite to the 2025 Reese’s Senior Bowl.
Tale Of The Tape
Shough has several attractive traits, and his profile would be much more intriguing if he wasn’t a seventh-year prospect who would be 30 years old before the end of his rookie contract.
He has a number of plus traits at his disposal that make him a credible playmaking threat, including good arm strength to drive tight window throws and a dynamic throwing ability that allows him to quickly get out of the mesh point and manipulate his arm angle to throw around defenders.
When it’s time to be an athlete, he is a quick-twitch player who has good bounce off his back foot at the top of the drop and can quickly climb the pocket and flush out an inside gap. When he’s forced off his spot, he usually runs to throw and will do well to keep his eyes downfield.
His release offers good pop on the move, and he’s unbothered by rolling to either his dominant side (right) or non-dominant side. Shough shows the ability to easily get out of the mesh point on play action and RPO looks. He can either pop the ball out into the flats from the back’s belly or accelerate and capture the edge to add horizontal stress to the defense.
In the dropback game, Shough is light on his feet but, at times, appears he’d benefit from more urgency in his drop. A number of times when Louisville ran basic hooks or hitches, Shough would be late to hit the top and pull the trigger against soft access in the secondary and have his throws more tightly contested against off man. He’s comfortable and exposed to working under center and does have good balance in his drop that shotgun-exclusive players may struggle with.
Shough shows sound progression processing, but his offense did not do him any favors with the lack of man-beaters or runaway athletes running routes. When he did process man coverage and was unpressured, he was lethal. Shough threw 11 touchdowns and no interceptions against Cover-0 and Cover-1; eight of those touchdowns came without pressure.
The contrast to the zone coverage processing is notable. Shough showed the ability to zip in-rhythm throws into holes in zone coverage, but his efficiency in decision-making and ball security against zone was frustrating — a testament to playing nearly 40 percent of his career snaps in 2024 despite a seven-year career.
Shough shows good accuracy and, on a number of occasions, could have had his receivers make tough catches or haul in throws coming in hot in tight windows, but they didn’t. His accuracy numbers feel better on his film than the numbers suggest. He’s particularly clean as an in-rhythm player if you can keep him catching early progressions and seeing the field clean.
He throws a catchable ball and has enough juice to play off-script, although his sense of navigating pressure is inconsistent, and his feel for efficient routes to evade pressure isn’t pristine.
There were a number of instances when he was forced to stare down free runners and try to deliver. He ducked and shied away from contact during his delivery, carelessly floating the football into a waiting sea of hands. Alternatively, he showed toughness on a touchdown pass in the red area against Notre Dame, in which he was sprinting left and took a hit under the chin while delivering a touchdown strike.
Teams will have to cross-reference his need for reps with his injury history and his timeline to maturation between the ears and his age and decide how to value the package together. His overall gifts are strong — he’s a good athlete with a twitchy arm and is well-regarded as a locker room presence.
Ideal Scheme Fit, Role
Shough projects as a developmental starter or bridge quarterback at the NFL level. He could absolutely be an adequate starter with a good cast around him in time, but the unlikely intersections required for opportunity, time on task at the NFL level, and health make it difficult to bet too big.
He’d be a good fit for an under center, play-action scheme that can play off of the dropback passing game with rollouts and bootlegs while taking advantage of his arm fluidity and athleticism.
Grade: 74.50/100.00, Third Round Value
Big Board Rank: TBD
Position Rank: TBD
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