The 2005 NFL Draft was the procedure by which National Football League teams selected amateur college football players. It is officially known as the NFL Annual Player Selection Meeting. The draft was held April 23–24, 2005. The league also held an supplemental draft that year, which was held after the regular draft but before the regular season. The draft took place at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City, New York and was televised for the 26th consecutive year on ESPN and ESPN2. The NFL Draft had been held at Madison Square Garden since 1995, but was moved to the Javits Center in 2005. The draft featured the San Francisco 49ers selecting first overall Alex Smith from the University of Utah. Also 4 Auburn University players were drafted in the first round. Thirty-two compensatory selections were distributed amongst fourteen teams, with the Philadelphia Eagles and the St. Louis Rams garnering the most with four picks each. Three of the first five picks were running backs, an NFL Draft first. The 255 players chosen in the draft were composed of:

The National Football League Draft is an annual event in which the National Football League (NFL) teams select eligible college football players and it is their most common source of player recruitment. The basic design of the draft is that each team is given a position in the drafting order in reverse order relative its record in the previous year—the last place gets positioned first. With this position, the team can either select a player or trade their position to another team for other positions, a player, or players, or any combination thereof. After each team had utilized its position in the drafting order, whether by trading it or selecting a player, a round would be complete. Certain aspects of the draft, including team positioning and the number of rounds in the draft, have seen revisions since its first creation in 1936, but the fundamental methodology has remained the same. The original rationale in creating the draft was to increase the competitive parity between the teams as the worst team would, idealistically, have chosen the best player available.

Matthew Thomas "Matt" Ryan (born May 17, 1985), nicknamed "Matty Ice," is the starting American football quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons of the National Football League. He was drafted in the first round as the third overall pick in the 2008 NFL Draft after playing college football at Boston College.

He was Boston College's starter from 2005 to 2007, leading them to three bowl victories and a 25-7 record in 32 starts. He threw for 200 or more yards 15 times and is fifth all-time in school history in passing yards and in pass completions. He earned MVP honors at the 2005 MPC Computers Bowl.

In 2007, Ryan led his team to an ACC Atlantic Division championship and was named ACC Player of the Year. During his rookie year, Ryan started all 16 games for the Falcons and led them to the playoffs with an 11-5 season record. He has also earned honors as the 2008 NFL AP Offensive Rookie of the Year.

Ryan comes from an Irish Catholic family on both sides, and is the third of Bernice and Michael Ryan's four children. Ryan's uncle, John Loughery, played quarterback at Boston College from 1979-82. Ryan launched a website during his senior year at BC called Mattyice.com (a nickname derived from the beer Natty Ice), where fans and media have 24-hour access to video highlights, updated biographical information, statistics and other information about Ryan. He also created an activity named "Folleyball" for NFL Play 60 at NFL Rush.com. Ryan is also an avid golfer and has participated in such tournaments as the American Century Celebrity Golf Championship, including Augusta National Golf Club. Ryan also is part of the Falcons online reading program “Read with a Falcon”.

Aaron Charles Rodgers (born December 2, 1983) is an American football quarterback for the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League (NFL). He was selected in the first round (24th overall) of the 2005 NFL Draft by the Packers. Rodgers played college football at the University of California, Berkeley, where he set several California Golden Bears records, including lowest interception rate at 1.43%.

Professionally, Rodgers is the NFL's all-time career leader in passer rating during both the regular season with a rating of 104.1, and the post-season with a rating of 105.5 – among passers with at least 1,500 and 150 pass attempts respectively. He also holds the league's lowest career pass interception percentage for quarterbacks during the regular season with a percentage of 1.80%, and the single season passer rating record of 122.5. Rodgers led the Green Bay Packers to win Super Bowl XLV and was named Super Bowl MVP. As a result, he was named Associated Press Athlete of the Year in 2011.

Russell Wilson (born November 29, 1988) is an American football quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League. Wilson played for the University of Wisconsin, where he led the Wisconsin Badgers to the 2012 Rose Bowl and a Big Ten Title. Prior to his time at Wisconsin, Wilson played for the North Carolina State Wolfpack football and baseball teams. In 2008, Wilson was named the ACC Rookie of the Year in football and became the first ever freshman quarterback named First-team All-ACC. The Colorado Rockies of Major League Baseball selected Wilson in the 2010 draft with the 140th pick. He played second base for the Asheville Tourists, the Rockies' Class A affiliate of the South Atlantic League in the summer of 2011. On April 27, 2012 he was drafted by the Seattle Seahawks with the 75th pick of the 2012 NFL Draft.

Wilson attended the Collegiate School, a preparatory school in Richmond, Virginia, US. As a junior there in 2005, he threw for 3,287 yards and 40 touchdowns. He also rushed for 634 yards and 15 touchdowns. He was named an all-district, all-region, and all-state player. Wilson was twice named the Richmond Times-Dispatch Player of the Year.