The 2025 NFL Mix week was stuffed with Matthew Stafford rumors, Starbucks confrontations, and an absence of participation on the sector.
High quarterback prospects Cam Ward and Shedeur Sanders won’t take part in drills on the mix, regardless of being in Indianapolis for conferences with groups. Earlier than you go forward and freak out—it is fully comprehensible why they gained’t take part.
These prime two prospects don’t have anything to achieve. They’ll solely harm their draft inventory by taking part. With tens of tens of millions of {dollars} at stake, no one is blaming Ward or Sanders for opting out of drills. Equally, when Ward determined to decide out of the second half of the Pop-Tarts Bowl to guard his draft inventory, no one raised a lot of an eyebrow.
And so they’re not the primary gamers to skip. Andrew Luck by no means participated in mix drills, and neither did Joe Burrow. The listing goes on.
However this isn’t nice information for the mix. The NFL tries to show the whole lot into an enormous spectacle. The NFL Draft jumps from metropolis to metropolis, and each NFL playoff recreation gives an enormous financial enhance to town fortunate sufficient to host them.
The mix has been in Indianapolis since 1987, but it surely’s beginning to lose a few of its star energy. Nearly all of gamers now understand they don’t must take part. As an alternative, they will work out at their college’s professional day, the place they will throw to receivers they’re comfy with, sleep in their very own mattress, and be aware of the coaches surrounding them.
Gamers like Jaxson Dart and Will Howard will take part in mix drills on Saturday afternoon, and that’s actually what the occasion has turn out to be—a possibility for mid-round gamers to extend their draft inventory.
More often than not, movie speaks for itself. Until a participant fully tanks drills on the mix, it doesn’t impression their draft grade a lot. Whereas there’ll at all times be a necessity for the mix to assemble medical info and meet with prospects, the occasion might by no means have the identical star energy because the NFL Draft because of the lack of participant participation.
Whereas neither Ward nor Sanders will step foot on the sector, they each advised the media that they imagine they’re one of the best quarterback within the class. It’s as much as NFL decision-makers to observe the tape and resolve which certainly one of them is telling the reality, as a result of the followers in Indianapolis won’t have the chance to make that distinction for themselves.
