Quarterbacks: There are a lot of them! Each week, QB Curve will keep you up to speed on the game’s most important position by putting a different SEC signal-caller in the spotlight and putting the rest of the field in perspective. Previously: Tua Tagovailoa/Jalen Hurts … Jake Bentley … Jordan Ta’amu … Drew Lock … Jarrett Guarantano … Joe Burrow … Jarrett Stidham … Jake Fromm … Feleipe Franks … Terry Wilson … Kellen Mond … Will Grier/Kyler Murray/Shea Patterson

QB of the Week: Tua Tagovailoa

Typecasting: The Chosen One

If you’ve been waiting on a bold contrarian take to offset the weekly onslaught of valentines to the most hyped player in college football, sorry to break it to you: This is not that take. I’m sure someone somewhere on the Internet is willing to go there. Good luck to them. Back in reality, we know the real deal when we see it.

Honestly, I almost wish this was that take. What’s left to say about Tua that hasn’t already been said to the point of boredom? He’s a 5-star talent, a future first-rounder, a generational player from halfway around the globe who’s singlehandedly altered the standing assumptions about Alabama’s offense.

If anything Tagovailoa has exceeded the hype. He was hailed after his breakthrough performance in January’s National Championship Game as the next phase in the evolution of Nick Saban’s Bama Death Star, and he’s turned out to be exactly that. People have speculated for years what a standard-issue Saban juggernaut would look like with a bona fide, Heisman-caliber star behind center, and this season is the answer. It’s terrifying.

The numbers, of course, speak for themselves: Alabama leads the SEC and ranks among the top three nationally in total offense, scoring offense, yards per play, and pass efficiency, setting a school-record pace in all of the above. The Tide have eclipsed 50 points in 7 of 11 games; usually topping 30 points by halftime; even after a pair of relatively pedestrian wins over LSU (a mere 29-0 romp) and Mississippi State (24-0), they’re still a full 10 points per game ahead of the previous high-scoring team in the Saban era, in 2016, whose output you may recall was boosted by a scoring bonanza on defense and special teams. Individually, Tua remains on pace to break Baker Mayfield’s single-season FBS records for pass efficiency and yards per attempt, mostly without breaking a sweat. He’s attempted a single fourth-quarter pass all year.

Normally, this would be the point to drop in an obligatory reminder that Alabama has yet to face a Playoff-worthy opponent this season and maybe feign concern about the ability of a young quarterback — still only a sophomore! — to level up in the postseason.

In Tagovailoa’s case, he’s been there, done that. He introduced himself to the nation by leveling up in the postseason as a true freshman, and has sustained that level throughout his first full campaign as a starter. The only real concerns with Auburn and Georgia looming to close the regular season are a) his knee, and b) his waistline on the other side of the December awards circuit. Because the next defense that contains him at 100 percent will be the first.

The good

This section could be devoted to Tua’s touchdown passes alone. He has 31 of them this season, a school record, on just 237 attempts, good for the best touchdown-to-attempt ratio (one TD per 7.6 attempts) in the nation, by far. He had 26 before he threw his first interception, in the ninth game of the season. He makes putting the ball in the end zone look so routine that it’s possible to slot the majority of them into one of four genres, which collectively make for a useful summary of his overall skill set:

1. The Haymaker

Given enough time — which he usually has — Tagovailoa throws as fine and effortless a deep ball as any QB in the country, a testament to his raw arm strength, next-level pocket presence, and top-shelf offensive line. (Tua’s taken significantly fewer sacks than any other full-time SEC starter, one of the benefits of playing behind a no-brainer All-American at left tackle.) His deft footwork, advanced recognition and quick release on these throws are going to make him a lot of money in 2020.

What sets Tagovailoa apart, though, even among the small subset of draftable prospects, is his relentless accuracy. No other college passer has connected on as many 50-yard gains this season, or shown the same flair for consistently hitting NFL-fast targets in stride from almost any spot on the field — Bama’s top five receivers all average upwards of 18 yards per catch with at least 4 touchdowns apiece.

The most NFL-ready of the bunch (although not the fastest, somehow) is sophomore Jerry Jeudy, recipient of Tagovailoa’s first big-splash touchdown of the year in Week 3 massacre at Ole Miss …

… as well as deep strikes against Arkansas …

… and Missouri, on an inch-perfect heave that traveled more than 50 yards in the air:

In certain respects — especially the way he frees up the middle of the field by looking off the deep safety, No. 9 in the clip, with his initial glance into the left flat — that stands as arguably Tua’s most eye-opening throw of the season. Arguably, because the following week he did this:

More than any other factor, the capacity to make that throw is the reason Tagovailoa surged past Jalen Hurts, whose highlight reel in his two years as a starter was almost totally bereft of big plays downfield. The list of quarterbacks for whom it qualifies as a day-at-the-office kind of throw is a short one, and almost all of the other names on it are getting paid handsomely.

2. The Mint On the Pillow

Tagovailoa’s reputation-making, 2nd-and-26 touchdown pass to DeVonta Smith in last year’s championship game is the emblematic play in this category, reserved for pinpoint touch passes from the edge of the red zone. If these throws are the gridiron equivalent of a 3-pointer, Tua is Steph Curry:

Because his receivers are so adept at creating separation, it can be difficult to appreciate the anticipation and timing required to throw them open in these situations without throwing them out of bounds. He has to envision them breaking open before they actually do …

… and stick the landing before his target runs out of runway:

Stakes notwithstanding, each of those throws had a higher degree of difficulty than the championship-clinching heave to Smith, who was left fairly wide open en route to history. But when the timing and placement are perfect, the coverage hardly matters.

3. The Coffin Corner

For all the firepower on the outside, Tagovailoa’s favorite target in the red zone is his tight end, Irv Smith Jr., who’s steadily emerged this season from afterthought to A-plus security blanket. Smith has plenty of big-play potential in his own right, but his stock-in-trade is a shallow corner route to the front corner of the end zone, some variation of which has yielded touchdowns against Ole Miss (note Tua’s subtle feint to the back in the flat to move the linebacker out of the throwing lane) …

… Tennessee ..

… LSU, at the expense of the Tigers’ soon-to-be All-American safety, Grant Delpit …

… and Mississippi State, where Smith was technically out of bounds at the 1-foot line …

… but set up an easy score on the next play. Altogether, Smith has many touchdowns this season (7) as former first-round pick O.J. Howard had in his entire Bama career, which says less about either of them than it does about the fundamental shift in philosophy that followed Tagovailoa’s ascension to QB1.

4. The Scramble Drill

Tua was tabbed out of high school as a “dual threat,” and at his most creative he’s managed to combine that athleticism with his uncanny spatial awareness to produce big plays out of situations that, in the hands of almost anyone else, would spell certain doom. In fact, if there was any single moment in 2017 that foreshadowed Tagovailoa’s emergence at the end, it was a random, garbage-time play at Vanderbilt on which he turned an inevitable sack into a whirling, seat-of-the-pants touchdown pass on the fly:

https://twitter.com/hunteransley/status/950859049850961921

Realistically, it’s a borderline miracle that worked even once. The fact that essentially the same move worked again, to cap Bama’s opening drive of the season, is something else:

By Week 8, that brand of ad-libbed sharpshooting under duress read less as a miracle than as Tua being Tua, in sync with his receivers to an almost eerie degree:

In contrast to Hurts, who averaged about a dozen carries per game over the course of 2016-17, Bama has treated Tagovailoa more like the franchise QB he is, deliberately curbing his role in the zone-read game. When he does run, it’s typically a scramble that ends in a slide or a duck out of bounds. Occasionally, though, he offers up a reminder that the pocket-bound routine is a choice, not a necessity, and when the opportunity arises he has some legitimate wheels, sore knee and all:

That play covered 44 yards, a career long by a wide margin, but Tua had two 20-plus-yard runs last year in limited action and nearly half of his non-sack carries this year have gone for first downs. In the National Championship Game, his pin-balling, 9-yard run on 3rd-and-7 was the spark in Alabama’s first touchdown drive of the night, and might have kept him on the field. (Had he gone down on initial contact — or second, or third — it would have been Bama’s second consecutive 3-and-out to open the second half with Tagovailoa in place of Hurts.) It’s not optimal in the kind of lopsided beatdowns the Tide have been administering so far this season, but when he’s healthy Tua’s mobility is clearly an asset. That they can afford to keep it largely under wraps is just one more luxury.

The not-so-good

Does it matter that Tagovailoa has yet to play a full, four-quarter game in his career? Probably not. But his ailing knee is a concern: He had to bail early in Alabama’s wins over Missouri and Mississippi State in obvious pain, and despite shrugging off the severity of the injury from week to week he hasn’t looked fully himself in more than a month.

It’s not for nothing that the arrival of a knee brace coincided with his first remotely mortal-looking outings of the season against LSU (25-of-42, 295 yards, 2 TDs/1 INT) and Mississippi State (14-of-21, 164 yards, 1 TD/1 INT). Then again, it’s not a coincidence that the Tigers and Bulldogs are by far the best defenses he’s faced this season, either, both of them blue-chip units that rank among the top 10 nationally in points allowed and Defensive S&P+. Neither allowed a true deep shot, holding Tagovailoa to an exceedingly ordinary 7.3 yards per attempt; that’s barely half his average (13.8) in Alabama’s other nine games.

The Mississippi State game, especially, marked the first real slump for Alabama’s offense almost across the board, resulting in season lows for passing yards, total yards and yards per play, as well as for points; only Texas A&M has held the Tide to fewer yards on the ground. After marching for touchdowns on their first two offensive series, the Tide’s only other TD came via short field, following a muffed punt just before halftime. Tagovailoa took as many hits against the Bulldogs as he’s absorbed seemingly all season, including 4 sacks, and committed 2 turnovers — 1 fumble and 1 interception, just his second of the year.

The good news, injury-wise, is that Tua played sans brace Saturday against The Citadel, and Jalen Hurts saw the field for the first time since undergoing minor surgery on his ankle in late October. If big plays remain in short supply the next two weeks against Auburn and Georgia, it might be time to consider that the better defenses on the schedule have actually figured something out.

The takeaway

Of course, Alabama’s problems are all relative, if they even qualify as problems: As long as Tagovailoa is upright, Bama is going to continue its streak as the betting favorite in every game it plays. For Saturday’s Iron Bowl date with Auburn, the Tide are –24; for the SEC Championship showdown against Georgia, the spread will likely hit double digits. In their least dominant wins, the Tide still outscored LSU and Mississippi State by a combined 53-0; with the exception of Saturday’s meaningless scrimmage against The Citadel, they’ve led by at least 21 points at halftime of every game. Their narrowest margin of victory is 22 points, in a game — like most games — in which the offense conspicuously throttled down in the fourth quarter.

It’s very possible that Georgia, and conceivably Clemson in a potential Playoff game, boasts the athletes to create problems for Tagovailoa that he hasn’t even had to think about thus far. But the flip side is also true: For all its explosiveness, we’ve yet to see Alabama’s offense really hit the gas. The vast majority of the Tide’s record-breaking output has come in the first three quarters, the lion’s share of that in the first two. They’ve consciously held their dynamic young star back, relegating him to the sideline for roughly a third of the team’s offensive snaps.

With the talent around him, a healthy, fully engaged Tua has as high a ceiling as any college quarterback since Cam Newton, who also happens to be the last SEC quarterback to close out an undefeated season with a national championship. With its talent on defense, Bama might not need Tagovailoa to come anywhere near that ceiling over the coming weeks for him to add his name to that list. But just knowing it’s there if they need it is enough to make this the most diverse and dominant outfit of the Saban era.

Matthew Stafford Arm of the Week: Justin Fields

It took a glorified scrimmage against UMass, but finally Georgia fans got a glimpse of the golden arm they’ve been waiting most of the season to see:

Fields earned his most extensive playing time of the season, put up career highs passing (121 yards) and rushing (100) and accounted for 3 touchdowns. But we already knew he could run; the part that’s going to keep defensive coordinators awake at their desks is the first hard proof that he’s capable of much more.

QB Power Hour!

Ranking the league’s starting quarterbacks heading into Week 13.

1. Tua Tagovailoa, Alabama. The 24-point spread speaks for itself, but Auburn’s front four is the strength of the team and the best chance the Tigers have of keeping it respectable by making Tagovailoa’s afternoon as uncomfortable as possible. The sooner he can call it a day, the better. (Last Week: 1)

2. Jake Fromm, Georgia. Fromm joins Tagovailoa and Kyler Murray as the only quarterbacks who rank among the top four nationally in pass efficiency and Total QBR, and still will probably never be more than one bad half away from hearing half the fan base calling for him to be thrown overboard for Fields. (LW: 2)

3. Drew Lock, Missouri. Lock’s 257-yard, 2-touchdown stat line at Tennessee was good, but as usual the individual highlights were a lot better. (LW: 4)

4. Jordan Ta’amu, Ole Miss. Ta’amu passed for a career-high 457 yards in the Rebels’ overtime loss at Vanderbilt, the fourth consecutive week he’s eclipsed 300 yards in a losing effort. The rest of the league’s quarterbacks are a combined 13-3 when passing for at least 300 yards this season, with two of those three losses coming at the hands of Clemson (Kellen Mond) and Notre Dame (Kyle Shurmur). (LW: 3)

5. Jake Bentley, South Carolina. Bentley has played some of the best football of this career over the past few weeks. Next up: Clemson, which has been responsible for his worst performance by far in each of his first two seasons. (LW: 6)

6. Kellen Mond, Texas A&M. The Aggies are slight favorites to beat LSU on Saturday for the first time since they joined the conference in 2012. At 7-4 going in, the result stands to dictate the mood in College Station for the next nine months. (LW: 5)

7. Jarrett Stidham, Auburn. Last year’s Iron Bowl win seems like a very long time ago. Barring a miraculous turn by the Tigers’ anemic ground game, a repeat looks virtually impossible. (LW: 7)

8. Joe Burrow, LSU. Only 3 of Burrow’s 9 TD passes have come in the red zone, which is emblematic of bigger problems when the Tigers are scoring position: His overall red-zone completion percentage (28.1) and pass efficiency (59.4) are easily the worst among all Power 5 conference starters. (LW: 8)

9. Nick Fitzgerald, Mississippi State. Fitzgerald got a warm send-off in his final home game, a 52-6 stomping of Arkansas in which he accounted for 5 touchdowns and had exactly zero spectators calling for him to be benched. Beat Ole Miss to finish 8-4, and no one will even remember that whole episode ever happened. (LW: 9)

10. Kyle Shurmur, Vanderbilt. If Shurmur gets taken in next year’s draft — a very real possibility — he’ll be just the third QB drafted in Vandy history, joining Jay Cutler (2006) and Billy Wade (1952). First up: Beating Tennessee this weekend to get the Commodores into a bottom-rung bowl game. (LW: 11)

11. Feleipe Franks, Florida. Franks rivals Mond as the most improved SEC quarterback from 2017 to 2018, and it says a lot about the conference’s depth at the position that he continues to rank this low. With at least 4 and as many as 6 of the quarterbacks listed ahead of him here on their way out at year’s end, he could conceivably open 2019 in the top 5. (LW: 12)

12. Jarrett Guarantano, Tennessee. The Vols sorely missed Guarantano, who got knocked out early against Mizzou and watched backup Keller Chryst throw a pair of killer interceptions in Tennessee’s worst loss of the year. He’s considered “day to day” for Saturday’s finale at Vanderbilt (aren’t we all).
(LW: 10)

13. Terry Wilson, Kentucky. It hasn’t been pretty, but assuming the Wildcats finish off a rock-bottom edition of Louisville on Saturday, Wilson will be the first quarterback to lead Kentucky to a New Year’s Day bowl since Tim Couch in 1998. (LW: 13)

14. Ty Storey, Arkansas. It could have worse, under the circumstances, but Storey’s rocky tenure as the Razorbacks’ starter doesn’t bode well for him hanging to the job next year as a fifth-year senior. Still, going out with an out-of-the-blue upset over Missouri would make for a nice audition. (LW: 14)