Every landing spot on the 2025 quarterback carousel, predicted
Minnesota Vikings News
Free Agency is finally upon us, with the Legal Tampering Period opening up this Monday. Teams are making some last minute moves with players in-house before chaos erupts at the top of the week, and all eyes are on the increasingly uncertain 2025 QB carousel.
The Tennessee Titans, Cleveland Browns, Seattle Seahawks, Pittsburgh Steelers, New York Jets, New York Giants, Minnesota Vikings and Indianapolis Colts are the teams most often discussed as likely QB destinations in the coming days. In what most regard to be a limited free agent and draft pool of suitable options, tensions are high. Nobody wants to be left without a seat at the table this fall.
I decided now would be the best time to hop in my time machine and check out how all of this ends up in a couple of weeks. I saw where the dust on this settles, and lucky for you, I’m in a sharing mood. So put on your best tea leaf reading glasses and let’s check out where each unsettled quarterback ends up in 2025:
Geno Smith – Las Vegas Raiders
This one already happened! It’s the domino that fell first in this year’s QB carousel, and so it’s where we’ll begin with the landing spots.
What an exciting first domino it was, as nobody really expected to see this happen when it did. The story behind the scenes is still a bit murky as well, and it seems like Geno’s affection for Pete Carroll and/or lack of love for his current situation played a big part in it.
This takes the Raiders out of the QB fight, and tags the Seahawks in.
Sam Darnold – Seattle Seahawks
In the fallout of the Geno news, the expectation for where Seattle looks next became apparent almost immediately: this is the Sam Darnold spot.
Is it a particularly sound plan? We’ll see about that. I like Darnold a lot, and believe what he did in 2024 was much more than a flash in the pan or a complete result of his environment. But this seems a lot like the Seahawks replacing Geno with a cheaper, younger version of Geno who has one significant flaw: he’s very pressure-sensitive, which was a strength of Smith’s.
Seattle’s interior offensive line has been a total mess the past couple years. Geno made a lot of chicken salad out of chicken… well, you know. They need to address that position in a significant way to get the best out of Sam if he’s their guy.
Cam Ward – Tennessee Titans
I’ve written at length about why the Titans options with the first overall pick have been narrowed all the way down to Cam Ward, which you can read about here, here and here.
At the end of the day, I’m going to bet on the top of this draft following Occam’s Razor. Often in life the simplest answer is the correct one, and the simplest outcome with the first pick is Tennessee staying put and taking the top QB in the draft. Unless the Giants blow them away with an offer, or the Browns have been the sneaky sleeper agent all along and decide to jump from 2 to 1, I don’t see the Titans finding a trade-down they like enough to pass on Ward.
They take their guy at 1, try to maneuver a way to another top-100 pick somehow else, build in free agency like the Commanders did last year, and pray their new QB somehow does for them what Jayden Daniels did for Washington (Jesus, I’ve seen what you’ve done for other people, and I want that for me.)
Justin Fields – Pittsburgh Steelers
The Steelers are in a familiar place: needing QB help badly, and being in no position to realistically address that need in the draft. They have the 21st pick in the First Round, so their attention has been on the pair of free agents they had on the team last year: Russell Wilson and Justin Fields.
We’ll get to Russ in a moment, who I have as much interest in talking about as the Steelers apparently have in re-signing. By all accounts, Fields is their target to bring back if possible. Reports point to him wanting to test his market before coming to a decision, but I think he’ll ultimately end up returning to play for Mike Tomlin in the Arthur Smith system for a 2nd consecutive year.
What a strange situation though; when was the last time a starter was benched partway through the season in lieu of another QB on the roster, finished the rest of the year as a backup, and then was asked to come back as the starter next year at a higher salary? What a lovely situation Pittsburgh is in…
Shedeur Sanders – New York Jets
As I run through this exercise, the team that keeps creeping up in my mind is the Jets. If anybody is liable to go completely off the board and blow this whole thing up, for some reason it feels to me like it would be them.
That’s largely due to the fact that their situation is mostly a blank slate, and their franchise hasn’t been a massive part of the QB rumor mill so far. The story everybody seems to be in agreement about is that they’re in on Justin Fields as their guy, at least in a bridge capacity.
But when something seems like a given in the spring, it often feels fishy to the initiated. New Head Coach Aaron Glenn and GM Darren Mougey are certainly interested in more than just “Fields or bust” right now. They have to be. So when Fields ends up back in Pittsburgh, what’s the pivot?
Speaking of spring certainties I simply refuse to buy, I don’t trust this idea that the Browns are just content to stick at 2 and take whichever QB falls to them. That doesn’t pass the sniff test one bit. I won’t be surprised at all if Ward goes 1, and a Shedeur Sanders gets passed over by Cleveland.
And while I think more highly of Sanders as an NFL QB prospect than the league seems to, what the league thinks is what actually matters when trying to project landing spots. So I have him falling all the way to 7, where the Jets take the Colorado passer to kickstart their new era.
Kirk Cousins- Cleveland Browns
As I mentioned above, I don’t know what the Browns plan is. But I feel pretty strongly about what it is not, and that’s “take whichever QB falls to us at 2”. That’s just not how NFL teams operate most of the time, and it especially makes zero sense for us to know that’s the case all the way back in February.
The connection that’s been made here for a while in free agency is Kirk Cousins. He isn’t a free agent at the moment, of course, as he’s still under (a massive) contract with the Falcons. But conventional cap management wisdom tells us that his release will come sooner than later, and Kirk will be in the same situation Russell Wilson was in last offseason. His next team will be able to pay him practically nothing, as his existing contract with Atlanta is still lining his pockets and every dollar from his new team just offsets that money.
Cousins has made it clear in the past how big a fan he is of Kevin Stefanski and the system he runs, and Stefanski appears to be a fan of Kirk as well. I think this is the most likely landing spot for if (when) Kirk is cut, and the Browns will take one of the two blue chip players in the draft at second overall.
Aaron Rodgers- New York Giants
The Giants are so stuck. They have been ever since Drew Lock put up one of the most efficient games in modern statistical history against the Colts in Week 17 last season (that’s not an exaggeration by the way, go look it up).
They want the first overall pick badly. They had it, and then lost it. And now they’re questioning whether it’s worth paying to go get back. The Titans are driving a hard bargain demanding future 1sts be included in the haul, and it’s unclear if Giants brass is willing or even able to pony up that big. Is ownership giving this last-chance regime the green light to mortgage the future of the franchise for Cam Ward?
If they end up staying at 3, this is where I’m personally conflicted. This could be the Shedeur spot assuming he makes it past Cleveland or whoever is picking at 2. My own opinion of Shedeur combined with some of what I’ve heard behind the scenes makes me think this is a real possibility. But the louder drumbeat league-wide is that everybody is lower on Shedeur than I am. And if he falls past the Giants at 3, I think he lands in Jets territory later in the top-10.
All of that expositions explains where the Giants are now: very publicly courting Aaron Rodgers. I think this is what happens, because it’s what has to happen. These are the two misfit kids looking at each other from across the dancefloor at the middle school dance. Guess it’s you and me! Are we happy about it? Not exactly. But it’s where we’re at right now.
Daniel Jones- Indianapolis Colts
I cannot believe this in the year of our Lord 2025, but it appears to be true: Daniel Jones has multiple seriously interested suitors.
That’s right, NFL teams are actually set to fight over the right to have Danny Dimes on their payroll this year. He has officially entered reclamation status, and the Vikings and Colts are amongst the teams wanting to take that project on.
I ultimately think he ends up in Indianapolis, because they needs somebody just like Jones to push Anthony Richardson. Their young, somewhat flailing franchise QB needs competition in a bad way. In hindsight, there’s real regret over simply handing him the starting job and title. The Colts need somebody who will present a real competitive threat to him throughout the offseason. But that person needs to ultimately lose the QB battle, and then serve as a very strong backup both on and off the field throughout the year.
Daniel Jones was built for that job. Indy adds a very necessary piece.
Jameis Winston- Tennessee Titans
Tennessee doubles up! Before they ever reach draft day, I fully expect the Titans to make a move at QB in free agency. While they continue to entertain the possibility of trading away the rights to Cam Ward, they’ll find an uninspiring bridge quarterback on the veteran market. This person will serve as their starter in 2025 if they wind up moving off the top pick, and will be the bridge they need to get Ward up and running if they do end up taking him.
Who is the most exciting yet uninspiring bridge in the modern NFL? Jameis Winston, baby. I could see this being somebody like Jacoby Brissett or Mac Jones as well, but we’ll go with Jameis in this article because I know the Titans wouldn’t be opposed to it and I selfishly hope it happens.
Russell Wilson- Backup? Emergency? Retirement?
Every team is going to fight hard not to be left standing when the music stops, and there are a couple who could realistically fail to do so. But I think there’s a quarterback more likely to be left without a partner than any of the needy teams, and his name is Russell Wilson.
I just do not see the landing spot for him. It’s going to take somebody truly desperate, who is looking at their 2nd, 3rd, or 4th option. Maybe one of the New York teams gets to that dark place? Could Pittsburgh ultimately have to come crawling back? Or maybe the Titans scoop him up as their bridge.
It won’t shock me if he eventually finds a home. But I won’t be surprised if he is who ultimately gets left out in the cold.
