Dolphins Draft Breakdown: The Book On Quinn Ewers

The former Texas product is Miami's latest shot at fixing the backup quarterback position.

Texas Longhorns quarterback Quinn Ewers (3) throws the ball against Ohio State Buckeyes defense in the first quarter of the Cotton Bowl Classic during the College Football Playoff semifinal game. | Kyle Robertson/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Backup quarterback is an incredibly important position for the Miami Dolphins, and the team took a swing on one in the seventh round of the 2025 NFL draft. 

The team selected Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers with the 231st pick, adding him to a room with starter Tua Tagovailoa and backup Zach Wilson. Getting drafted that late was a fall from grace for Ewers, a highly touted recruit who led Texas to consecutive CFP appearances. 

This is part of our draft film review series, where we do in-depth breakdowns for the Dolphins’ top picks in the 2025 NFL draft. We examine each prospect's strengths, weaknesses, and fit with the Dolphins. 

Did the Dolphins get a steal with the Texas product? Let’s dive into Ewers’ skill set and find out. 

Quinn Ewers’ Accuracy 

Accuracy is arguably the most crucial skill for a quarterback. If a quarterback isn’t accurate at a baseline level, it’s almost impossible to turn him into a quality player. 

At first glance, Ewers appears like an accurate passer. He completed 65.8 percent of his passes last season and had five games in which he completed at least 70 percent of his passes. 

However, if you dig a little deeper (or watch his tape), it’s easy to see why Ewers’ completion percentage was so high. The Texas offense made his life incredibly easy. 

Of Ewers’ 445 passing attempts last season, 306 were for 10 or fewer air yards, with 125 of his attempts coming behind the line of scrimmage. That means 28 percent of Ewers’ throws last season were behind the line of scrimmage. 

That number would be first when compared to Jaxson Dart, Cam Ward, Shedeur Sanders and Tyler Shough — all players drafted before Ewers.

Of Ewers’ 293 completions last season, 191 came on flares, hitches and screens, which don’t account for run-pass options. Now, Ewers’ ability to handle the ball well and throw from weird angles in the short game probably appealed to head coach Mike McDaniel. 

This rep against Michigan is a good example of how Ewers’ ability to win on RPO concepts fits the Dolphins’ scheme. Ewers can throw sidearms when he’s targeting short routes, which has helped Tua Tagovailoa maximize Miami’s passing game. 

The issue is that Ewers’ accuracy drops off a cliff when he’s forced to push the ball down the field, especially if he’s off platform. This throw against Oklahoma should be incredibly simple. 

He’s climbing up in the pocket, has a clear vision of the receiver, and just sails it high and behind his target. Ewers completed just 37.7 percent of his throws beyond 20 air yards last season, and most of those completions are to wide-open receivers. 

Quinn Ewers’ Touch 

This is — by far — the best part of Ewers’ game. He got three years of starting experience at Texas, which clearly helped him develop a good feel for throwing passes with good touch. 

Ewers does a really nice job floating the ball over the head of underneath zone defenders, but not putting so much air under the ball that his receivers run into the deep defenders. This rep against Michigan is one of the best throws Ewers made all season. 

Like Ewers’ quick-game accuracy, this trait likely convinced McDaniel to take a shot at developing Ewers. 

The Dolphins offense demands a lot of touch throws from its quarterbacks because teams tend to counter Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle’s speed with zone coverage. Ewers should be capable of making some of those difficult throws. 

Quinn Ewers’ Arm Strength 

These two categories go hand in hand, and while Ewers’ touch is pretty good, he lacks the needed arm strength to make every throw on the NFL field. 

As a recruit, Ewers was billed as a passer with impressive arm strength. However, that was a long time ago, and the tape from his most recent season at Texas shows a player who is below average for the NFL level. 

This rep against Oklahoma is an excellent way to judge arm strength. Ewers’ offensive lineman gets pushed into his lap, forcing him to make this throw downfield without stepping into it. 

A prospect with above-average arm strength completes this pass. A prospect with average arm strength reaches his receiver, but perhaps not in time to complete the pass. Ewers does neither, and while it would be fair to point out that this is a difficult throw, these are the types of passes NFL quarterbacks have to make. 

Even from a clean pocket, Ewers’ tape is littered with plays where he tries to drive the ball into a tight window and doesn’t have enough velocity to get it there. 

Now, McDaniel has done an excellent job getting Tagovailoa to succeed despite his lack of arm strength. That said, Ewers lacks Tagovailoa’s accuracy and perhaps, more importantly, his anticipation. 

Tagovailoa gets away with lackluster arm strength because he can release the ball quicker and more accurately than most quarterbacks in specific areas of the field. Nothing on Ewers' tape indicates he could do the same at a high level without significant development.  

Dealing With Pressure 

Ewers has a terrible habit of creating his own pressure from a clean pocket. He’s not bad at identifying Cover-0 blitzes and beating them after the snap. He did that on the go-ahead touchdown against Arizona State in the College Football Playoff. 

That’s a good trait to have, but Ewers’ ability to beat obvious blitzes is almost completely canceled out by how often he turns a clean pocket into a muddy one. 

This play against Oklahoma is a good example of a few things we’ve discussed. The route concept at the top of the screen is a sit route with a dig route run behind it. It’s a simple read, as the middle of the field comes wide open pretty quickly. 

Ewers is looking that way right off the snap, but he misses the dig route completely. Then he tries to run out of the pocket to his right, allowing the defender to beat his offensive tackle and eventually creating a sack. 

Ewers turned a play with a wide-open receiver and a clean pocket into a sack. There was no reason for him not to hit the dig route, and there was no reason for him to run out of the pocket. 

Plays like this are a common occurrence on his film, and his lackluster athletic profile doesn’t make it easy for him to avoid pressure. Ewers’ 23.2 pressure-to-sack rate was the 14th highest among all college quarterbacks with at least 100 dropbacks last season. 

The next-closest quarterback from the 2025 class was Sanders, who ranked 29th with a 19.6 pressure-to-sack rate. 

This is where we’ll have to bring up some of Ewers’ injury concerns. He takes a lot of hits because he’s not overly athletic or good at managing the pocket. Plus, he’s got an incredibly thin frame. 

He weighed 214 pounds at the NFL Combine, which was good for just the 25th percentile among quarterbacks since 2000. However, he was listed as 210 pounds at Texas, so there’s a good chance 214 isn’t his playing weight. 

If you need more evidence of this being an issue, Ewers missed six starts in three seasons due to injuries. 

The Bottom Line With Ewers 

We’ve been hard on Ewers, but the truth is, there’s not much risk to the Dolphins drafting him in the seventh round. He got a crash course in Miami’s offense while playing at Texas last season, and he matches Tagovailoa’s physical profile quite a bit. 

McDaniel has crafted an offense that would allow someone with Ewers’ limitations to thrive, and in an ideal world, Ewers will get plenty of time to sit on the bench and develop this season. Ewers also should get credit for his toughness and character. 

He played through injury at Texas (torn oblique in 2024) and routinely put his body on the line when he didn’t have to. By all accounts, he also did an excellent job handling all of the noise around Arch Manning stealing his job. 

If Ewers can prove he’s a capable backup, that would save the Dolphins a ton of money every offseason and provide the team with the stability it hasn’t had during the past few seasons. For all of those reasons, it’s hard to get too mad about this pick. 

That said, it’s equally hard to feel good about a quarterback developing over time when they don’t have above-average traits to develop. 

This is the same approach McDaniel took with Skylar Thompson. His fit and familiarity with the scheme were valued over his actual skill set, and betting on Thompson as the team’s primary backup is one of the reasons Miami’s season fell apart in 2025. 

While Miami’s thought process makes sense, and Ewers fits what the Dolphins like to do on offense, we would have preferred if they went a different direction instead of trying the same thing that hasn’t worked in the past. 

Still, if Ewers becomes a quality backup, Miami is the most likely place for it to happen.