LaNorris Sellers could have been a first-round pick. Instead he's running it back at South Carolina — because everyone can see the 242-pound athlete, and almost nobody has seen him throw it consistently yet. That's the bet of his 2026.
He entered 2025 with No. 1-overall buzz and left it with questions: 2,437 passing yards, 13 touchdowns against eight interceptions, 270 yards and five scores on the ground — on a team that went 4-8. The tools are undeniable (6-3, 242, the inevitable Cam Newton comparison), and he bet on them, forgoing the 2026 NFL Draft to come back. South Carolina answered by hiring Kendal Briles to install a free-flowing Air Raid built to unlock exactly his kind of athlete from a too-structured scheme. The forward stakes are the leap that defines his career: the legs are already elite, so 2026 is about the throws — cleaner pocket play, fewer sacks, more consistency. Do that, and the No. 1-pick conversation comes back. Don't, and he's the cautionary tale of a freak who never learned to pass.
How he plays
Sellers is a problem as a runner and a project as a passer, and the data draws the line hard. On the ground he's elite: our play-by-play grades his rushing success rate in the 91st percentile and his EPA per carry in the 81st — a 242-pound back playing quarterback. Through the air it's the opposite: an 17th-percentile EPA per dropback, a 22nd-percentile completion rate, and a sack rate in the 2nd percentile — he holds the ball and takes a brutal number of hits. Scouts (Pro Football Network) see the same film: "wicked arm strength," but he "gets stuck staring down his primary target" and turns throwaways into negatives, "wholly too inconsistent" with accuracy that runs "hot-and-cold." The encouraging note is ball security — he's "relatively patient" and protective for an elite rushing threat. The whole season is one question: can the passing rise to meet the athlete?
