The biggest winner of Shedeur Sanders' shocking NFL Draft fall might have been Quinn Ewers. And that's only because all eyes were on the Colorado quarterback rather than the Longhorn's plummet.
The difference between Sanders and Ewers was no one had illusions of Ewers being a top five pick. Still, it's a shock that he wasn't one of the top 10 quarterbacks taken. Hell, Graham Mertz and Cam Miller of NDSU heard their names called first. No one saw that coming.
There is one other similarity between Sanders and Ewers: Few college football quarterbacks would have commanded as much NIL cash as those two if they had opted to enter the transfer portal. That path was never really on the table for Shedeur, but it was certainly part of the equation for Quinn.
Rumors abound that teams were willing to funnel as much as $8 million for Ewers in the transfer portal. Carson Beck commanded $4 million from Miami. While we now know Nico Iamaleava's bid for similar money flopped, Ewers likely wouldn't have had the same problems.
How does that compare to the money he'll earn on his rookie NFL deal?
Quinn Ewers might have made more in NIL in one year than the life of his first NFL contract
Contracts for picks in the seventh round of the 2025 NFL Draft come with contracts valued between $4,352,831 and $4,301,474. The first year cash on those deals ranges from $878,208 and $865,369. That's per Spotrac.
So yeah, Ewers lost a lot of money by passing on the reported NIL deals available to him, if they were indeed in the $8-4 million range. Even if he only made $2 million in 2025 NIL, that's more than twice as much as he'll get as an NFL rookie.
Perhaps this is just Ewers' level. He could have entered the draft in 2026 and still slid to the seventh round. He'd be a year older, but also $8 million richer.