Diego Pavia is headed to a minicamp tryout with the Baltimore Ravens after going undrafted in the NFL Draft, a jarring turn for a quarterback who just led Vanderbilt to a 10-win season and finished as one of the sport’s most talked-about names.
Pavia, 24, powered a Vanderbilt offense that averaged 7.5 yards per play in 2025 and helped lift the Commodores behind Clark Lea and offensive coordinator Tim Beck. Vanderbilt had only one player drafted this year, tight end Eli Stowers, who went in the second round to the Philadelphia Eagles.
The contrast between Pavia’s college production and his draft result was stark. The Athletic analyst Dane Brugler ranked him as his No. 16 quarterback and left him outside the top 300 prospects, calling his arm “mediocre.” Pavia’s five-foot-ten frame and personality may have worked against him too, with some evaluators already discussing character concerns before the draft.
Those questions followed him. When he was 21 and at New Mexico State, Pavia urinated on the practice field of rival New Mexico, an incident that has lingered in any discussion of his background. He has also leaned into the swagger that made him a college star, posting “F the voters” after finishing second to Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza for the Heisman Trophy.
That edge helped make him a breakout figure, but it also left him in a strange place on draft weekend: celebrated for winning and producing, yet still treated by NFL teams as a risk. Brugler called him the “life of the party,” but the league’s view was colder, and the result was no selection at all.
The bigger picture for Vanderbilt is just as unusual. SEC teams that won at least 10 games since 2010 have averaged 6.8 players drafted, but Vanderbilt had only one. For a program that reached double-digit wins with Pavia driving the offense, the numbers underline how much of the season ran through one player — and how uncertain his path to the league remains, even with a Ravens tryout now on deck.