Building the Beast: First 2025 impressions of the draft-eligible quarterbacks
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Athletic
4.6 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 2 September 2025
⏱️ 71 minutes
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Summary
We saw Arch Manning, Garrett Nussmeier and LaNorris Sellers all play in Week 1, to varying results. What are our first 2025 impressions of all of those quarterbacks? And who else should NFL Draft heads already be taking notice of this season? Dave Helman and Dane Brugler recap Week 1 of the CFB season on this episode of Building the Beast.
Hosts: Dave Helman and Dane Brugler
Executive Producer: Michael Beller
Producer: Michael Beller
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Disney Lullaby, a cute playlist with soothing lullaby versions of Disney songs. |
| 0:11.0 | The Disney Lullaby playlist. Listen now. |
| 0:28.9 | Welcome to the second episode of Building the Beast. |
| 0:29.6 | And guess what? |
| 0:30.9 | We got football to talk about. |
| 0:32.4 | We already previewed the show. |
| 0:33.6 | You know what we're here to do. |
| 0:38.7 | Every week, Dane Bruegler and myself are breaking down this year's college football season in regard to the 2026 NFL draft. We are trying to build the beast Dane's wonderful annual |
| 0:45.3 | draft guide. That is the goal and we have got a whole week one schedule to go through as we |
| 0:51.8 | identify who to know, who to be impressed by, who to keep an eye on |
| 0:56.2 | during this 2025 college football season. There is a lot to get to after a loaded week one. |
| 1:01.9 | So that'll do for an intro. Let's jump into the show. |
| 1:10.2 | You know, Dan, it always feels a little surreal. It's a seven-month wait for the season, |
| 1:15.1 | and then it gets here. There's so much anticipation. And you look back on it, you're like, |
| 1:19.9 | damn, did that just happen? Like, I can't believe we finally have stuff to react to actual results |
| 1:25.4 | to inform our opinions. How'd the first weekend treat you? |
| 1:29.1 | It was fun. First time in 36 years that we saw four top 10 teams lose on opening weekend, |
| 1:38.0 | which is always fun that we see that immediate shakeup. I know people get upset because of |
| 1:42.8 | preseason rankings and all that. |
| 1:44.9 | We shouldn't have them until October. I don't chill out. Like it's, it's for TV. It's for, you know, |
| 1:50.0 | to talk about these teams as you try to blindly rank them over the summer. But in terms of prospects, |
| 1:58.0 | I think a lot of players stepped up. Some players let us down. And it's going to be an interesting quarterback class. You know, I think there's excitement over it because it's so much better than we had last year. But it's still not a great class. You know, I think if you're looking for your quarterback savior in this draft class, you're probably going to be disappointed. I'm not |
... |
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