Mel Kiper Jr. can’t shut up about Shedeur Sanders, who was still on the board heading into Day 3 of the 2025 NFL Draft. I might have missed it, but I don’t remember Kiper Jr. weighing in on UVA Football alum Jonas Sanker going late in the third round to New Orleans.
Sanker doesn’t have a film crew following his every move.
The local kid – Sanker starred at Covenant, in eight-man football – didn’t get on the field as a high-school senior, because his high-school senior season was in 2020, the COVID year.
A three-star recruit, Sanker is a foreign-affairs major at UVA.
As a former foreign-affairs major at UVA, I can vouch for the work that goes into that part of his college experience.
I can’t imagine being a full-time football player on top of that.
And then being good enough at the football thing to get a job in the NFL.
Sanker was on the field a lot the past three seasons at Virginia, logging 634 snaps in 2022, 834 in 2023 and 796 in 2024.
He put up nice Pro Football Focus grades the past two seasons, 77.8 in 2023 and 72.8 in 2024.
Sanker had 107 tackles in his junior season and 98 last year as a senior, with 16 passes defensed and 12.5 tackles for loss across the two seasons.
NFL.com analyst Lance Zierlein wrote that Sanker is an “energetic safety with good production but areas to clean up in his game,” among those, that he can get “caught staring into the backfield at times, so his team will need to work on his eye discipline and focus.”
“Sanker’s traits and special teams value could lock him into an NFL roster early on and give him a chance to work his way up,” Zierlein wrote.
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Chris Graham
