Diego Pavia Gets His NFL Shot in Baltimore After Draft Slide Leaves QB Heisman Runner Up Waiting

Diego Pavia did not hear his name called during the draft, but he is not done trying to force his way into an NFL quarterback room.

The former Vanderbilt quarterback has accepted an invitation to attend the Baltimore Ravens’ rookie minicamp, giving one of the more polarizing and productive college quarterbacks in the country a chance to compete for a place in the league after an unexpectedly quiet draft weekend. The minicamp is scheduled for May 1-3.

The move comes after Pavia went undrafted despite finishing as the Heisman Trophy runner-up in 2025. That made him the first Heisman finalist to go undrafted since Jordan Lynch in 2014, and one of the more surprising quarterbacks to fall completely out of the seven-round draft this year.

Pavia’s college resume gave him a real case to be drafted. At Vanderbilt in 2025, he led the SEC with a 70.6% completion rate, threw 29 touchdown passes, rushed for 862 yards and 10 scores. The year prior he helped engineer one of the biggest upsets of the season when the Commodores beat then-No. 1 Alabama.

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Before Vanderbilt, he had already built a strong track record at New Mexico State, where he earned Conference USA Offensive Player of the Year honors in 2023. He finished college with 10,255 passing yards and 88 touchdowns.

That production, though, was not enough to overcome the questions NFL teams clearly had about his size and arm. Pavia is listed at 5-foot-10, and multiple reports said scouts were concerned about both his height and what they viewed as limited arm strength by NFL standards.

Those concerns followed him right through the draft and ultimately pushed him into the minicamp-tryout route instead of an immediate contract as an undrafted free agent.

Baltimore gives him an interesting landing spot.

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The Ravens did not draft a quarterback and currently have only Lamar Jackson and Tyler Huntley on their active roster, leaving room for a developmental No. 3 quarterback if someone impresses. Pavia is expected to compete at rookie minicamp with UConn quarterback Joe Fagnano, who is also getting a tryout.

The opportunity is not a signed deal, and there is no guarantee it leads to a roster spot, but it does give Pavia a real chance to show whether his style can translate at least well enough to stick around through the summer.

And his style is the whole reason this will be worth watching.

Pavia has never been the clean, prototypical quarterback prospect teams like to draw on a whiteboard. He is a dual-threat creator, a rhythm-breaker, a player who wins with movement, timing, confidence, and a lot of edge.

Baltimore, with Jackson already established as the starter, is one of the few places where a nontraditional quarterback skill set does not immediately feel like a bad fit on arrival. That does not mean Pavia is walking into some perfect setup. It does mean the Ravens are at least a franchise that has lived successfully outside the classic quarterback template before. That last point is an inference from Baltimore’s roster and history, but it is a reasonable one based on the fit.

The other thing this does is keep Pavia’s story alive after a weekend that could have easily ended with disappointment and drift. Instead of spending days waiting for a better opening, he now has a clear next step and a date on the calendar.

For a quarterback who already made a habit of outperforming the expectations around him in college, that is probably the only kind of opening he really needed. It is not the draft outcome he wanted, but it is still a path, and for quarterbacks in his position, that is where the real fight usually starts.

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