Why NFL Draft experts say South Carolina QB LaNorris Sellers will be a Top 5 pick
LaNorris Sellers changed the narrative around himself and South Carolina in a matter of six weeks last season.
He transformed from the young quarterback who couldn’t stop fumbling to the hero of the Palmetto Bowl, pin-balling off Clemson Tigers defenders for the game-winning score and leading coach Shane Beamer to call him “the best player in the country.” The Sellers story shifted from, “Can this guy replace Spencer Rattler?” to, “Can he win the Heisman Trophy?”
He went from being a face within South Carolina to being known nationally. He is no longer a college football interest — he’s an NFL commodity.
A number of early NFL mock drafts for 2026 have Sellers in the Top 5, with The Athletic analyst Dane Brugler going so far as projecting the New York Jets to take Sellers with the 2nd overall pick in 2026.
“He’s just such a unique talent,” Brugler told The State. “He’s not a one-dimensional quarterback. As a passer, he has velocity with his arm. He can deliver with touch. He wants to be an in-structure quarterback — it’s not like he relies (solely) on his athleticism.
“But, I will say,” Brugler continued, “I think his superpower is how dynamic he is.”
Well, of course. While Sellers had solid stats in his redshirt freshman season — 2,534 passing yards, 674 rushing yards, 25 total touchdowns — his magic came on random 3-yard runs or even incomplete passes. It came when defenders had him dead-to-rights in the backfield, sometimes two or three guys with hands on his jersey. And then, all of a sudden, he’d slip out and make something happen.
The difference between the first and second halves of his 2024 season was how he improvised, how he used dire situations as a way to showcase his athleticism.
That progress is part of the reason more folks than just Brugler are high on Sellers. In his 2026 mock draft, released May 1, ESPN draft analyst Jordan Reid has Sellers going No. 4, also to the Jets.
“Watching quarterback growth,” Reid told The State, “is kind of like raising your kids and them figuring out their limbs. Like, ‘Oh, this is what my hands do. OK, I can use my legs in this situation.’ ”
Reid, who lives in Charlotte, remembered back to Sellers’ first collegiate start against Old Dominion. It was rough. He completed less than half his passes and almost seemed to want to catch the snap and just dart forward, which explains why he carried the ball a season-high 22 times and only netted 68 yards.
“But that was his first start, so I don’t really hold that one against him,” Reid said. “But once he figured out like, ‘Hey, I’m the most dynamic athlete on the field and I can just outrun people,’ or ‘I can out-muscle people,’ that’s when he really started to do a lot of those things.”
The next step in Sellers’ evolution is finding some sort of harmony between a quick-processing pocket-passer and the type of dual-threat quarterback who can create impromptu highlights with his legs. He’ll be a redshirt sophomore in 2025 but eligible for the NFL Draft after the season.
New offensive coordinator Mike Shula, a longtime NFL assistant, has made the emphasis of the offseason trying to see if his quarterback can have his cake and eat it, too.
“It’s a fine line, right?” Brugler said. “Because I think he wants to be a pocket passer. He wants to throw the ball down the field. But if you take his 10 most exciting plays from last year, eight or nine were with his legs.
“I think the goal is always to be a true pocket passer who can beat defenses with his mind and his arm,” Brugler continued. “The legs and the mobility aspect of it give you a little bit more of freedom to figure things out.”
In Sellers, Reid sees Donovan McNabb, the former Syracuse quarterback who went on to star for the Philadelphia Eagles. Both big-bodied quarterbacks who want to stand in the pocket and make throws but have no trouble evading sacks.
“One of the strongest quarterbacks that I’ve evaluated,” Reid said of Sellers, “and something I have to remind myself, even when I’m watching him, is that this guy’s only 19 years old, which is remarkable considering the growth that he made last year.”
This story was originally published June 18, 2025 at 8:00 AM.
