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The season is still young, and yet there’s been a lot of moves at quarterback. About half the teams in the league are not sold on their signal-callers. In Week 4, we’ll have two new starters in Auburn redshirt freshman Sean White and South Carolina true freshman Lorenzo Nunez.
We chose five guys to debate the greatest likelihood that they’re a lock at QB1. At least through this season.
WHICH QB HAS THE BEST CHANCE TO FINISH THE SEASON AS THE STARTER?
Brad Crawford (@BCrawfordSDS): Greyson Lambert
Barring injury, Greyson Lambert will be Georgia’s QB two months from now when the Bulldogs take on the Western Division winner in the SEC Championship Game. Many analysts were quick to dismiss the Virginia transfer as a reliable passer after a sub-par outing at Vanderbilt, but Lambert responded with an NCAA-record 24 completions in 25 attempts against South Carolina. Calm in the pocket, Lambert delivered strike after strike and made a wide variety of throws to reveal the separation between himself and second-teamer Brice Ramsey is considerable. Brian Schottenheimer’s confident that Lambert is the right man for the job and has publicly backed his quarterback several times during the first quarter of the season.
Nick Cole (@NickColeSports): Will Grier
In my mind, Will Grier ends this season as Florida’s starting quarterback. If new Gators coach Jim McElwain was interested in handing this job to sophomore Treon Harris, he would have done so months ago. He wanted to utilize the passing skills that Grier brings to the table, but he didn’t want to put the well-being of his entire football team in the hands of a freshman quarterback early in the season. As Grier continues to grow and develop confidence at the
college level, I think we’ll start to see McElwain pull away from the two-quarterback approach and start to put more responsibility on Grier as his “quarterback of the future.”
That’s not to say that Harris doesn’t have a place on this team or that he hasn’t earned the chance to play based on his performance, but McElwain has to do what’s best for Florida both now and two years down the road.
Jon Cooper (@JonSDS): Greyson Lambert
Mark Richt knew it from the beginning that Greyson Lambert gave the offense the best chance to succeed. He proved it last week during his record-setting performance against South Carolina. Obviously, Lambert will have some bad games, but as long as he doesn’t turn the ball over, UGA’s offense will be sound. The plan for Mark Richt is simple: let Lambert disperse the football to playmakers. Lambert doesn’t have to be the hero; he just has to get the ball into the playmakers’ hands.
Christopher Smith (@csmithSDS): Maty Mauk
It seems counterintuitive, because out of every quarterback on this list, Mauk is the guy whose backup has, at least statistically, outplayed him by a wide margin. Mauk has managed a paltry 5.9 yards per pass attempt, while Lock — in an admittedly small sample size — sits at 8.9. That’s a big gap, and it isn’t new. Lock’s stats were better in most of the team’s fall practices as well. But coach Gary Pinkel is the anti-Steve Spurrier when it comes to quarterbacks in that he’s one of the most patient coaches in the power conferences, at least at that position. Mauk has started for nearly two full seasons at this point, while Lock remains a true freshman. I don’t expect Lock to seriously compete for the job until next offseason, though Mizzou will continue to get him playing time.
For the record, I believe that at least four of these players will finish the season as the starter. I’m not sure about Sean White — we’ll see if Auburn rolls with him or stashes him back in the incubator — but Mauk, Coker, Grier and Lambert should hold onto their respective jobs, and probably in that order of likelihood.
Talal Elmasry (@TalalElmasrySDS): Greyson Lambert
It’s got to be Greyson Lambert for a few reasons: 1) What he showed last week was more than any of these quarterbacks have shown so far, and 2) He just doesn’t have a game-ready signal-caller pushing him. Treon Harris, Drew Lock and Cooper Bateman have all at least shown promise. You figure Sean White has to play pretty bad for Jeremy Johnson to be an option again, but White is an unknown commodity after all.
What’s interesting to me about all these quarterbacks is that they’re all surrounded by pretty solid teams, respectively. Grier and Mauk survived last week because of their stout defensive efforts, Coker and Lambert are on teams that should compete for division titles behind balanced offenses, and Auburn has the talent on both sides of the ball. I’m interested to see if Florida and Missouri continue to play in ugly games like they did last week with their offenses struggling and their defenses carrying the team, will that eventually push Jim McElwain or Gus Pinkel to make a change sooner than expected?
Born and raised in Gainesville, Talal joined SDS in 2015 after spending 2 years in Bristol as an ESPN researcher. Previously, Talal worked at The Gainesville Sun.
