The Las Vegas Raiders need a quarterback. How they go about filling that need is to be determined since they lack a head coach or general manager, but one possible avenue is always the NFL Draft.
The issue? The 2025 quarterback class is nowhere near the depth and talent of the 2024 class. Two names have appeared at the top of the big board in the public's eye -- Miami's Cam Ward and Colorado's Shedeur Sanders. Of the two, many have Ward ahead of Sanders.
After those two? That's where it gets shaky. Drafting a quarterback is a big deal at any point in the draft, but in the first round, a team cannot afford to miss on such a pick. It can set franchises back multiple years.
Our Hondo Carpenter recently broke some news he has heard from executives around the league about the quarterback class, including an interesting take on Ole Miss signal caller Jaxson Dart, who finished the 2024 season with 4,279 passing yards and 29 touchdowns.
"One guy whose team I would not say needs a quarterback desperately, though I think the Raiders have got to get one ... he said his organization has Cam Ward as No. 1 in his class out of Miami," Carpenter said. "And he also said that Cam Ward is the only quarterback that they have with a first-round grade. He also said that he would suspect that Cam Ward would have probably been the fifth-best quarterback in last year's class, he said maybe fourth, potentially third. ... His second quarterback he has with a second-round grade is Ole Miss quartebrack Jaxson Dart. He believes that there will be four-to-six quarterbacks selected in the first round, and that five of them is going to be a bad decision. It may pan out, it may end up O.K., but it would be a very, very bad decision.
" ... The other gentleman I spoke to also had Cam Ward, his team does not need a quarterback but they still value them, and they are very successful at drafting quarterbacks and they had Cam Ward clearly as No. 1 as well. And they also had Jaxson Dart as the second-best quarterback in this draft. And they had him in a low, 23-to-32 range in the first range."
