Picture this: Your Playoff chances are on the line. You’ve got one drive to keep your national title hopes alive down 5 points in need of a touchdown in the final 2 minutes. You turn around and see 8 quarterbacks with Playoff hopes standing there. All 8 want the ball.
Who do you give it to?
That’s a fascinating question as we look at the Playoff picture with 3 weeks of the regular season remaining. All of the quarterbacks playing for teams with Playoff chances are good. Like, really good. That’s obviously not a coincidence.
But who would I want the most with the season on the line? Let’s tackle that by Power Ranking the QBs with the best chance to make the Playoff:
9. Gardner Minshew, Washington State
You know we’re in for a good list when the last-ranked guy on it is leading the country in passing yards. Minshew, as you’ll recall, was the guy who Nick Saban recruited and nearly landed to be his third-string quarterback as a grad transfer from East Carolina. Instead, Minshew settled a few thousand miles to the Northwest and found a home in Mike Leach’s offense.
So why isn’t he higher on this list? The numbers are impressive — he also has 77 more pass attempts than anyone in America — but Minshew is still relatively unproven against the nation’s elite. A cupcake nonconference slate and a weak slate of Pac-12 defenses has me questioning if he’d really be the guy who you’d want with the season on the line. Obviously Leach doesn’t agree with that. We can all agree, though, that Minshew made the right call by not holding a clipboard at Alabama.
8. Ian Book, Notre Dame
Wait. A quarterback who’s undefeated this year is only at No. 8? Yes, but don’t consider that my way of saying Book is holding Notre Dame back. He’s not. The Irish have been a different team with Book under center compared to Brandon Wimbush. There aren’t a lot of quarterbacks who can claim they completed at least 64 percent of their passes with at least 2 touchdowns in every start. Add in his ability to make plays with his legs and I’ll agree that Book is one of the more underrated players in the country right now.
But compared to some of the other quarterbacks on this list, I question how much Book can really stretch the field. He’s a smart, efficient player. I just don’t know if he’s a game-changer against an elite defense. We’ve still yet to see what he’s capable of if he’s trailing by a touchdown late in a game — part of that being his own doing obviously — and he’s only got a half a season worth of starts under his belt. Until those questions are answered, Book isn’t on the top half of this list.
7. Shea Patterson, Michigan
“Shea Magic” is all over Ann Arbor. We’re finally getting to see what Patterson is capable of playing for a top-tier program. He helped Michigan roll to 3 consecutive blowout wins against ranked teams, which the Wolverines hadn’t done since their 1997 split national championship season. Patterson is hitting his stride with Jim Harbaugh, and it looks like the Ole Miss transfer doesn’t have any limitations in that system anymore.
Shea Patterson’s touch this season continues to be a strength.
And Donovan Peoples-Jones is a star. pic.twitter.com/XwTpuvIzKw
— Brad Galli (@BradGalli) November 4, 2018
Having said that, Patterson is still experiencing a run like this for the first time. And as good as he has been, he hasn’t had to do some of the heavy lifting like others on this list because of how dominant the Michigan defense has been. That’s not a knock on him, it’s just the reality. Patterson has only thrown for 1,667 yards and 14 TDs; neither total is in the top 45 nationally. He is going to continue to develop as he gets more big-game experience.
6. Dwayne Haskins, Ohio State
If you had asked me to rank Haskins on this list 3 weeks ago, I would have had him at No. 2. But after what we’ve seen from him recently, it’s hard to argue the fact that he’s not trending in the right direction heading into the home stretch. Since that game-winning comeback at Penn State, Haskins has been a bit all over the place. Even though the cumulative numbers have been excellent (400-plus passing yards in 3 of 4 games with 13 touchdown passes), the decision-making has been off.
Haskins is still one of the nation’s top signal-callers and few are better when they’re on. Ohio State could do much worse. But the limitations as a runner and the recent lull from him suggests he’s not quite on the level I thought he was a month ago.
5. Jake Fromm, Georgia
Clutch, experienced, talented. That’s not a bad trio for a quarterback to have. As odd as it is, Fromm is one of the most experienced quarterbacks on this list. Already. That’s why I give him an edge over someone like Haskins. Fromm is efficient, he can lead a comeback and he can make any throw. And while Fromm isn’t as mobile as someone like Kyler Murray, he can still move better than people give him credit for.
Fromm is never going to put up gaudy numbers playing in an offense with that kind of a backfield, but in winning time, few are better suited for a big-time moment. Let’s not forget how close he was to winning a national title as a true freshman. I’d argue he’s only gotten better since then.
4. Trevor Lawrence, Clemson
I think we often underestimate the difficultly of being a top-flight quarterback recruit and delivering immediately. Lawrence has done just that. The fact that he’s only a true freshman and not experienced with late-game scenarios is really the only reason he’s not higher on this list. But since Lawrence got full share of the starting job, Clemson has been an offensive juggernaut. In the four games that Lawrence started and finished since then, the Tigers averaged 60 points per game.
Trevor Lawrence had himself a DAY in @ClemsonFB's rout of Florida State. Check out his highlights from the 4 TD game in Tallahassee. #ALLIN pic.twitter.com/mMgTK4koqr
— Stadium (@Stadium) October 28, 2018
Lawrence is only going to keep getting better, too. He already looks like he’s got perhaps the best cannon in America, which is why he’s able to fit balls into such tight windows. There’s a decent chance that Lawrence gets an invite to New York, which would be quite the accomplishment for a true freshman signal-caller who wasn’t even getting full reps in the first month.
3. Kyler Murray, Oklahoma
Whether you think he’s the closest thing to Johnny Manziel we’ve seen in the sport or not, we can all agree on one thing. As long as Murray is doing this football thing, he’s a ton of fun to watch. He’s been way better than I ever could’ve imagined in the first year of the post-Baker Mayfield era in Norman. Operating with a play-caller as good as Lincoln Riley helps, but it’s what Murray does when the play breaks down that’s unbelievable. When forced to improvise and flee the pocket, he can deliver a bomb for a touchdown, or he can do it all himself and get 6 with his legs.
He actually just passed Tua Tagovailoa with the most yards per attempt (12.3), which would break Mayfield’s FBS record of 11.5 yards that he set during his Heisman Trophy campaign. Murray could rack up yards in a hurry on a last-ditch drive. Needless to say, he’s a much different player from the highly-touted but inefficient freshman he was at Texas A&M. I’d still love to see how Murray would fare against an elite defense, though.
2. Will Grier, West Virginia
The bearded gunslinger has been everything that West Virginia fans could have hoped for. I honestly would have had him a little bit lower on this list if not for what he did Saturday. Leading that comeback against Texas and picking up the 2-point conversion like that was as clutch as it gets. I would love to see Grier get an opportunity like that in a potential Big 12 Championship with a Playoff spot on the line. The fact that Dana Holgorsen trusted Grier to make that play in that spot says a lot. Grier, who has at least 3 touchdown passes in all but 1 game this year, seems like a lock to get a Heisman invite and be one of the first quarterbacks off the board in next year’s draft. Naturally, he’s worthy of one of these top spots.
My rankings are obviously different from that of Jim McElwain, who prefers Treon Harris.
Too soon?
1. Tua Tagovailoa, Alabama
Just because it’s obvious doesn’t mean it’s not true. Those double negatives will be the last negatives you hear from me while I gush about the Alabama southpaw. There’s nobody in the country you’d rather have to win a game than Tagovailoa. For obvious reasons. Let’s start with the fact that he’s on an absolute tear and gashing every defense in sight.
Cumulative numbers aren’t the best way to measure someone with one fourth-quarter pass all year. But the beauty of Tagovailoa is that while you can argue he hasn’t been pushed this year, the narrative that he lacks familiarity with clutch situations is nothing because of last year’s national championship. The guy delivered perhaps to most clutch throw in college football history.
He started the game as the backup QB. He ended it as an Alabama legend.
Tua Tagovailoa turned in a unforgettable championship performance. pic.twitter.com/bKVCNaGoBG— CBS Sports (@CBSSports) January 9, 2018
Yeah, give me Tagovailoa with the game on the line every day of the week and twice on the final drive of the National Championship Game.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
