2025 NFL Draft: Finding sleepers using PFF+

• PFF+ subscribers have a leg up: With PFF+ at their fingertips, subscribers can use the same data that 32 NFL front offices use to identify sleepers in the 2025 NFL Draft.
• Central Arkansas’s David Walker identified as a sleeper: Using PFF+, subscribers could find out that Walker performed much better than the typical small-school edge defender, making him a great candidate to be a sleeper in this year’s draft.
• 2025 NFL Draft season is here: Try PFF’s best-in-class Mock Draft Simulator and learn about 2025’s top prospects while trading and drafting for your favorite NFL team.

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

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If you want to be an NFL scout or general manager or a dynasty fantasy enthusiast then you should be a PFF+ subscriber to get access to NCAA premium stats. Odds are you have a job or other commitments that prevent you from watching 40-plus hours of college football per week, but you have a passion for the NFL draft. If you become a PFF+ subscriber, you instantly have the work of the largest scouting department in history (in the form of the PFF data collection team) at your fingertips. 

While you were busy living your life on a nice Saturday in September the PFF data collection team watched and graded every player on every play in every college football game and put the information on your computer in the morning. 

PFF+ subscribers have access to some of the same information used by all 32 NFL front offices. The data is there for subscribers to access to find trends in the data and find important points for your evaluations to determine what will lead to a player being able to succeed in the NFL. You can use PFF’s premium stats to assist in scouting players for the NFL draft or finding rookies for your fantasy team. 

For example, let’s look for NFL draft sleepers using premium stats, specifically players at the FCS level. Let’s start by trying to find a productive pass-rusher who isn’t in every first-round mock draft but has shown they can produce and help an NFL defense.

If you’re a PFF+ subscriber, then log in and follow along.

Search parameters:

• Open up PFF premium stats
• Select NCAA
• Select by position
• Click on EDGE defenders in the defense grades box
• Click on division and include both FBS and FCS

Out of the 297 teams represented in the search results the name at the top of the list is Central Arkansas’s David Walker with a 94.4 overall grade. A lot of you reading this are thinking, “Alexa, who is David Walker and why was he the highest-graded edge defender in college football this year?” 

Walker wasn’t a household name, but his production sticks out like a sore thumb using PFF premium stats. Walker’s 94.0 pass-rush grade ranks No. 1 among all FBS and FCS edge defenders. as he had 12 sacks, six quarterback hits and 37 hurries on his 351 pass-rushing snaps. His grades show that he isn’t just a pass-rusher, as he is also an outstanding run defender. Walker’s 92.0 run-defense grade ranks No. 1 among all FBS and FCS edge defenders as well. 

Clicking on his name and going to his player profile page shows that he wasn’t just a one-year wonder, as his pass rush grade was 90.3 in 2023 and 91.5 in 2022. David Walker has a proven track record of dominating his level of competition and winning both as a pass-rusher and a run defender. 

When you watch Walker on film, you see a player who shows multiple ways to win. He can use quickness and agility to get low around an offensive tackle, or he can use power to get underneath blockers and bull them back into the pocket. At a listed 6-foot-2 and 250 pounds, his elite production but lack of elite measurables are reminiscent of Shaquil Barrett when he came out of Colorado State.

Right away, a highly productive edge rusher stood out in premium stats. Let’s look at the other side of the ball and see if there is a small school FCS quarterback who stands out in premium stats.

Search Parameters

• Select by position
• Click on QB in the passing grades box
• Click on division and select FCS only
• Set draft year to 2025

The second name on the passing grade list is Cam Miller from North Dakota State with a 90.8 grade. He also has a very good 77.8 run grade, which ranks No. 2 among FCS quarterbacks in the class. One of the first things I check when scouting quarterbacks is our adjusted completion percentage which accounts for dropped passes, throwaways, spiked balls, batted passes and passes where the QB was hit while they threw the ball.

• The formula: ((Completions + Drops) / (Attempts – Throw Aways – Spikes – Batted Passes – Hit As Thrown)).

After sorting the player list by adjusted completion percentage it shows that Miller had a very high 77.7% adjusted completion percentage. In order to make sure that a quarterback’s high completion percentage wasn’t due to just throwing a bunch of screens and short passes, it’s good to take a look at his average depth of target (ADOT).  Miller’s ADOT was 10.1 yards, so he wasn’t a check-down king. Also, we can see that Miller’s adjusted completion percentage is the highest among the quarterbacks with a 10.0-yard-plus ADOT. Premium stats explicitly show us that Miller is an accurate intermediate-level passer and a productive runner.

Looking at Miller’s film, we see that he was fast enough to be used on designed QB runs. However, he looks to use his athleticism more to extend plays as he likes to keep his eyes downfield and can create and turn a broken play into a completion. 

So premium stats have led us to a quarterback to keep an eye on, but football is the ultimate team sport so who contributed to Cam Miller standing out this way? How good was his pass protection? 

Search Parameters

• Select by position
• Click on OL in the blocking grades box
• Click on Division and select FCS only

The second name on the list with a 93.1 pass-blocking grade is Grey Zabel, who was the left tackle for Cam Miller at North Dakota State. Premium stats show (under the pressures allowed columns) that Zabel only surrendered one sack, two quarterback hits and four hurries on his 453 pass-blocking snaps, giving him a 99.1 pass-blocking efficiency rating. Clicking on his player profile page and the breakdown by game shows he had an outstanding game against FBS competition in the Week 1 game against Colorado in addition to grading well when it mattered the most with back-to-back strong performances in the FCS playoffs.

Premium stats led us right to a future NFL pass blocker but successful offensive lines also need a guard who is an effective run blocker. Let’s see who has been able to move the man assigned to them in the run game at the FCS level. 

Search parameters

• Select by position
• Click on G (guard) in the run blocking box
• Click on division and select FCS only
• Select 20% of run block snaps (to filter out players with only a small number of plays)

The name at the top of the list is Marcus Wehr from Montana State with an 87.3 run-blocking grade. We can tell that Wehr graded better in 2024 blocking for zone runs (89.5) than gap runs (66.4). However, before we think of him as only a fit in a zone system, we should consider that 464 of his run-blocking snaps came on zone runs while only 77 of his run-blocking snaps came on gap runs, so it’s not conclusive that he’s a specifically cut out for a zone blocking team. Instead, it’s what he was asked to do in 2024, which he did better than any guard in FCS football. Let’s look at how Wehr performed as a run blocker in 2023 to give more context to his blocking ability on gap runs.

Looking at the 2023 results, I don’t see Wehr in the top 50 run-blocking guards, that seems off so I’m wondering if he played a different position in 2023.

• Go to the position tab and change it from G to all positions

Suddenly, Wehr is at the top of the list again as the best run blocker at the FCS level with a 92.7 run-blocking grade, including a 92.6 blocking grade on zone runs and an impressive 81.5 blocking grade on gap runs, but his position is listed as tackle. 

After clicking on his player profile, we see that he played 11 games at right tackle in 2023. Now, we know we are dealing with a player who performed at the absolute peak of his level of competition over two seasons at two different positions and graded well blocking on both zone and gap runs. This is a Sunday player.

What do you want to look for next? Run defenders? Coverage players? All the information is there in PFF premium stats waiting for you to find your own sleeper or draft gem.

If you think you will be able to find talented players by accessing the same information used by NFL Front offices and finding trends in the data then subscribe to PFF+. Also if you think you have what it takes to join the PFF data collection team and contribute to this massive project we hire new people before every season.