Statnite

The NCAA transfer portal has reshaped college football, offering players more flexibility than ever. But despite the rise in player movement, one thing remains consistent: NFL teams still favor prospects who stick with one program.

In the 2025 NFL Draft, 159 of the 257 players selected had never entered the transfer portal. That builds on last year’s trend, when 167 of 255 draftees also stayed at a single school (two players drafted didn’t attend a college in America). Over the last two drafts combined, 326 of 512 players — nearly 64% — were “homegrown,” developing entirely within one program.

Even as the portal opens new doors, most players headed to the league didn’t walk through them.

This preference becomes even clearer at the top of the draft board. Of the 102 players selected in the first three rounds of the 2025 draft, 69 had never transferred. The first round featured 25 single-school players out of 32, and that trend carried into the second and third rounds as well. It’s a similar story in 2024, where 75 of the top 100 picks stayed put, including 23 of 32 in the first round and 27 of 32 in the second. Early-round picks are often seen as franchise cornerstones — and teams are consistently putting their trust in players who grew within one system.

That pattern extends into the later rounds, too. In 2025, at least half of the players selected in each round came from one-school careers. Round four saw just over half of its selections go to non-transfers. Round five tilted even further in that direction. The sixth round leaned even more heavily toward players who stayed in place, and the seventh round still favored them by a narrow margin. The year before, rounds four through six all showed similar trends, with the only break coming in the seventh round of 2024 — where non-transfers made up just under half the picks, the lowest share across the two-year span.

Position-by-position, the preference for stability becomes even more pronounced.

Quarterback is the clear outlier. Of the 24 quarterbacks drafted in 2024 and 2025 combined, only five remained at one school — a stark contrast to the rest of the field. Every kicker and punter drafted (five and two, respectively) stayed put, and among centers, 12 of the 15 drafted over the two years never transferred. Other key positions followed the same trajectory: nearly 77 percent of offensive tackles, two-thirds of defensive tackles, and a solid majority of linebackers and running backs were drafted from single-school careers. Even among wide receivers and safeties — positions where athleticism and versatility are often showcased through transfers — most players drafted never entered the portal. Although, at receiver, more than half of the drafted players from that position have been in the portal.

Taken as a whole, almost two-thirds of all players drafted over the past two years had never transferred — a clear sign that NFL teams value long-term development in one system over the exposure and change that often come with moving around.

That said, some of the most headline-making prospects in recent years have come through the portal.

In both 2024 and 2025, the No. 1 overall pick was a transfer. This year, it was quarterback Cam Ward — who began at FCS Incarnate Word before stops at Washington State and Miami — following in the footsteps of 2024’s top pick, Caleb Williams, who transferred from Oklahoma to USC. It’s only the second time in the common draft era that back-to-back top picks have been FBS transfers, previously seen with Kyler Murray and Joe Burrow in 2019 and 2020.

Travis Hunter is another standout example. After starting at Jackson State, Hunter transferred to Colorado and continued to build his reputation as one of the most dynamic prospects in the country. His path, like Ward’s, highlights that talent can be found in a variety of ways — but that those cases remain the exception, not the rule.

Schools that keep their top talent in-house are seeing results.

Over the last two drafts, Georgia led all programs with 18 drafted players who never transferred. Texas followed with 17, while Michigan produced 16. Ohio State and Alabama each had 15 single-school draftees. Penn State and Notre Dame also stood out with 11 each, and programs like Washington and Clemson had 9, while LSU, Oregon, and Iowa showed they could develop and retain talent at a high level sending off 8 “homegrown” draftees.

In an age where the transfer portal is expanding opportunities for players across the board, the data tells a clear story: the path to the NFL still runs strongest through one door — and it’s the one that doesn’t move.