Diego Pavia, the Vanderbilt quarterback who finished second in Heisman voting, went through all seven rounds of the NFL Draft without hearing his name called. No one among the 32 NFL teams offered him a contract during draft weekend April 23-25, 2026, leaving the former New Mexico State star undrafted after a college career that had put him among the most recognizable quarterbacks in the sport.
That outcome made Pavia the first Heisman finalist to go undrafted in 12 years, an unexpected fall for a player who had helped Vanderbilt to its first winning season since 2013. He arrived in college at New Mexico Military Institute, spent six seasons across the junior college and major-college ranks, led New Mexico State to a bowl win in 2022 and a Conference USA appearance in 2023, then became the face of a Vanderbilt offense built around RPO looks that fit his run-first style.
The draft result also reflected how sharply pro evaluators viewed his game. Pavia stands at just under 5'10", a size that has long complicated his projection, and CBS Sports cited a Pro Day in which he connected on only three of 12 deep passes graded as on-time and on-target. Five of those misses were overthrown and four were underthrown, a rough showing for a quarterback whose college production had already made him a national talking point.
His profile brought more than football questions. In Nov. 2024, Pavia and 26 other players sued the NCAA over rules that limited junior college athletes to the same four seasons, a challenge that came after years of scrutiny over his public behavior. He had made headlines for incidents including urinating on the University of New Mexico's field logo and berating fans and fellow players online, and after finishing second to Indiana University's Fernando Mendoza in the 2025 Heisman voting, he posted an Instagram story that said, \"F- ALL THE VOTERS\".
Footage later showed Pavia at a club holding up the middle finger to a sign that read, \"F— Indiana,\" a snapshot that fed concerns about professionalism even as his on-field résumé grew. For a quarterback who went from junior college to a Heisman runner-up finish, the draft's silence was a hard verdict: the production was there, but on draft weekend, it was not enough to make an NFL team take him.
