From the time they decided to play quarterback, top 2025 NFL draft prospects Shedeur Sanders (Colorado) and Cam Ward (Miami) have been told the best things happen when the ball is in their hands.
They have been entrusted to make plays when it's winning time. If a spin move or quick retreat to find the big play meant holding the ball a little longer, so be it. That magic far outweighed the potential sacks and negative plays. But as they ascend to the NFL, creative throwers like Sanders and Ward have to learn how long is too long when it comes to holding on to the ball.
"When a quarterback comes into the league, he simply thinks, 'I am faster, more athletic or elusive than the people chasing me,'" said Craig Johnson, a long-time NFL assistant and quarterbacks coach for over two decades. "But you have to learn quickly [that being] late anywhere in the NFL is where the trouble starts. You want creators with off-schedule ability, but the clock runs out for everybody."
No one has been the subject of more questions about his internal clock than Sanders. His average time to throw last season of 2.96 seconds ranked 110th in the FBS, well above the national average of 2.76. Ward, the likely No. 1 pick, was at 2.91 seconds, which ranked 100th.
Those tenths and hundredths of a second can be the difference in how fast and effectively passers such as Sanders and Ward transition from coveted prospect to franchise quarterback. But why is hanging on to the ball a red flag, and can it be fixed? We took a closer look at one of the hardest habits to break for young passers entering the NFL.
"I'm realistic, I know what I need to improve on," Sanders said. "Put on the tape, those mistakes [are] cut down yearly. So I'm hyper aware of everything I need to do to be successful."
AT TIMES DURING the pre-draft process, Ward seemed genuinely shocked at the idea he held the ball too long.
Ward's play style resulted in an FBS-leading 39 touchdown passes last season. And the fiery competitiveness that took him from a zero-star recruit at FCS school Incarnate Word in 2020 to fourth in the Heisman voting at Miami in 2024 shows when he's asked whether he waits too long to throw.
"At the end of the day, if you have time in the pocket, why would [I] not hold the ball and let [my] receivers get open?" Ward said. "If you ever make plays out of structure, of course you're going to hold the ball and try to make a play and get your receivers open."
Watch some of Cam Ward's best throws at Miami's pro day as the quarterback looks to be a top pick in the 2025 NFL draft.
Sanders' own counterargument is his accuracy. He completed an FBS-leading 74% of his passes in 2024, and his 6.5% off-target rate was the third lowest in the FBS.
But as one scout who frequented the Big 12 put it, "Holding it was his default. When he lets it go, it's accurate, in frame, in the right spot. But his clock has to be different in the league, or it's way too many negative plays."
The negative plays typically include unnecessary sacks, late throws resulting in interceptions and stalled drives due to pass-rush-induced throwaways.
"You can analytically assign points per drive," Denver Broncos coach Sean Payton said. "Then you can analytically say, 'What do my points per drive look like after a sack?' Obviously, those numbers drop. It goes against trying to stay on schedule. It goes against getting to the third-down numbers that are manageable. Then, there's this emotional and psychological toll with a sack that you have to overcome."
Sanders says he knows the difference between what he did compared to what he should have done in some situations. And he said he has made that clear to those who have asked him to evaluate his own play during team interviews.
"I got to get ready mentally early [in games] because I know early on, some games I wasn't taking the completions coach was calling," Sanders said. "Sometimes I was trying to make too much happen. ... And sometimes I got caught up playing hero ball, but I understand where I messed up, and now I'm going to fix it at the next level."
NO ONE IN the FBS has been sacked more frequently the past two seasons than Sanders, who was dropped a combined 94 times. While the Buffaloes' offensive line frequently struggled, his decisions to hold the ball also played a part.
Many scouts have referenced plays like Sanders had in a 2023 loss to Oregon -- where the retreating quarterback took 7- and 16-yard sacks on back-to-back plays to turn a first-and-10 into a third-and-33. But Sanders isn't alone in this, as last year's top draft prospect was critiqued for similar kinds of plays.
Bears quarterback Caleb Williams has endured painful early lessons. The first NFL sack he suffered went for a 19-yard loss, as the No. 1 pick spun twice and continued to retreat before being taken down. It was one of a league-leading 68 sacks he took in 2024, when his QBR of 46.7 ranked 28th out of 32 qualified quarterbacks.
While a spotty offensive line didn't help, Williams' tendency to hold the ball -- his time to throw of 2.92 seconds ranked 30th out of 36 qualified quarterbacks -- contributed to his sack total and was something some evaluators thought he might struggle with in his NFL transition.
In his last season at USC in 2023, Williams' average time from snap to throw was 3.14 seconds, the fourth highest in the nation. It was the same number in his Heisman-winning 2022 season. Only Florida's Anthony Richardson, who has had his own bumpy ride since the Indianapolis Colts selected him with the fourth pick in 2023, held the ball longer that season.
When asked at the combine, newly hired Bears coach Ben Johnson said that one of his major goals was to find a better way for Williams to consistently move the ball without depriving him of his off-schedule creativity.
"The out-of-structure, the off-schedule, the creation, that's what stands out the most because that's really the way this league is going right now," Johnson said. "As much as you want to make it pure progression, one to two to three, there's just too much variety. To have an athlete like Caleb extend the play and potentially find an explosive down the field, that's what gets me going a little bit."
BREAKING THE TENDENCY to hold the ball can be one of the most difficult things in the NFL, as it's sometimes the result of a quarterback not understanding where to go with it. But it's possible to improve with buy-in from the quarterback and schematic help from his coaches.
Many in the league point to the Buffalo Bills' Josh Allen, the reigning NFL MVP, as the shiniest example of the progress a player can make in learning now to quicken his release time. His average time to throw has improved from 3.22 seconds as a rookie in 2018 (slowest in the league) to 2.88 seconds in each of the past two seasons.
Allen called his former offensive coordinator (and current Giants coach) Brian Daboll the most influential person in his early NFL development. Daboll created options for Allen to get quick reads and move the ball quickly via slants. These "glance routes" were meant to give him completions early in plays. Allen's percentage of short inside routes steadily moved upward during his first five seasons, from 8.4% as a rookie in 2018 to 12.8% in each of the past two years.
Daboll also leaned more into three-wide-receiver sets in 2020 and 2021 to give his quarterback more pure dropback plays with open spaces. In 2020, the Bills were in three-wide sets 71.2% of the time (fourth highest in the league). Those schematic wrinkles jump-started Allen's development. He has turned into one of the league's best players and is coming off a season in which he had career lows in sacks (14) and interceptions (six) along with a career-best QBR (77.3).
"Part of it is cleaning up footwork, so they hit the mark more efficiently, whether coming back from center or in the [shotgun]," an AFC quarterbacks coach said. "Part of it is giving these young guys the routes they need. ... And get them to understand most of the time, [getting] it out of your hand on time is enormously important. Their talents to create will be used, but they have to learn when."
Sometimes the improvement can happen before even getting to the NFL. Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe, considered a Day 2 pick by many NFL evaluators, has taken a proactive approach to quicken his time to throw. In 2023, Milroe had the third-highest average time from snap to throw in the FBS at 3.2 seconds. But he reduced it to 2.86 seconds in 2024.
"[The] biggest growth for me from '23 to '24 was taking less sacks," Milroe said. "Being disciplined in the pocket, I think every sack is always on the quarterback. Any time in the game, they should know where the [hot routes] are, know when to get rid of the ball. They should know when to be aggressive and also when to be disciplined when it comes to reads."
Whoever drafts Ward or Sanders will be looking for similar progress. Because while there are successful NFL quarterbacks who hold the ball -- Lamar Jackson and Jalen Hurts among them -- even those QBs had to discover the line between when their creativity is needed and when they must hit the quick crossing route to move the chains.
"The toughest lesson is really that, as a quarterback, you have to earn the right to hold the ball a little longer," Craig Johnson said. "You want guys who make some plays off schedule, not guys who are just always off schedule, and that is the lesson. Learn it, and you play a long time."