The 2026 college football season gets underway in earnest this weekend with a full slate of games in Week 1.
Each week in this story, I’ll rank the best 7 quarterbacks — plus maybe an honorable mention or 2 — to that point in the campaign. Since the season hasn’t started for the vast majority of teams, we’ll be relying mostly on prior performance to formulate these rankings.
I’ll be leaning heavily on available advanced metrics, which recently got better thanks to CollegeFootballData.com’s addition of new passing metrics. Some data points like air yards and pass direction don’t yet have full coverage for the 2025 season, but the data is complete (or close to it) from Week 8 onwards. That gives us a workable sample size for these rankings, but it’s not bulletproof.
A few helpful definitions to know:
- CPOE (Completion Percentage Over Expected) — actual completion % minus expected completion %, where “expected” is what an average FBS QB would complete given each throw’s depth, direction, down, distance, and field position.
- Dead-end play rate — share of all QB plays (pass attempts + sacks + rushes) that gain 4 yards or fewer without converting a first down or scoring. Measures how wasteful a QB is on a down-to-down basis.
- (Rush) success rate — share of QB rush attempts that gain 50% of the yards-to-go on 1st down, 70% on 2nd, or 100% on 3rd/4th (TDs always count). Sacks and kneel-downs are excluded.
- ADOT (Average Depth of Target) — average air yards per attempt: how far downfield past the line of scrimmage the average throw is aimed, counting incompletions and INTs at their intended target depth. Measures aggressiveness and intent, but not whether the pass was completed.
- Deep-throw rate — share of attempts targeted 15+ yards beyond the line of scrimmage.
College football quarterback rankings (Week 1)
Let’s dive in:
1. Julian Sayin, Ohio State
Julian Sayin enters the year as my No. 1 quarterback. Last season in Year 1 as Ohio State’s starter, Sayin completed 77% of his passes, averaged 9.2 yards per attempt and had a 4-to-1 TD-to-INT ratio. He doesn’t provide any rushing value, but Sayin’s efficiency stands out. He posted a CPOE of 12.4% over the second half of last season, which is elite. If there’s one thing to nitpick in Sayin’s passing, it’s his 8.8-yard average depth of target — not bad by any means, but it’s shallower than some of his peers. Chalk that up to being a perk of playing in Ohio State’s offense — his receivers are good enough that he doesn’t necessarily have to take the risks that his counterparts do. Sayin also had the best dead-end throw rate in the nation last season (37.6%), even better than Fernando Mendoza.
2. Jayden Maiava, USC
Jayden Maiava’s underlying numbers are excellent. He averaged 9.2 yards per attempt last season and had a CPOE of 6% in charted games — below a few other quarterbacks on this list, but solid. Maiava stands out because he pushes the ball downfield while still maintaining efficiency. He posted a 24% deep-throw rate (15+ air yards) and completed those passes at a rate of about 14% over expectation. Lastly, Maiava showed good mobility metrics even if he’s not racking up rushing yards. He had a low 2.2% sack rate and an elite 64% rushing success rate.
3. Trinidad Chambliss, Ole Miss
For my money, Trinidad Chambliss is certainly the SEC’s best quarterback entering 2026, though Arch Manning or Gunner Stockton could challenge for that title early in the season. Chambliss came from relative obscurity to win Ole Miss’s QB job early on last season and never let go of the rope. Underlying metrics like CPOE (11.2%), sack rate (2.8%) and INT rate (0.7%) fully back up his breakout season. He’s also great with his legs, averaging 4 yards per carry while tacking on 8 touchdowns in 2025. He could be a bit more efficient on the ground (44% success rate is below average) but that’s nit-picky.
4. CJ Carr, Notre Dame
CJ Carr could ultimately be the best quarterback in the country in 2026, but I don’t have him there quite yet. His CPOE in charted games is strong (8.7%), as is his INT rate (2%). Carr settles for 4th on this list for a couple of reasons. One, he’s not as good with his legs as Trinidad Chambliss is. Two, his numbers suffered in early-season tests last year against Miami and Texas A&M. That’s understandable given that those were his first 2 starts, but it’s difficult to project what he’ll look like against elite competition when we haven’t seen Carr face an exceptionally strong defense in almost a full year.
5. Dante Moore, Oregon
Dante Moore opted to return to Oregon for the 2026 season, foregoing the chance to be a top 5 pick in this past spring’s NFL Draft. He’ll lead an Oregon team that has legitimate national title aspirations this fall. Moore slips to No. 5 on this list because his average depth of target in charted games was just over 7 yards — pretty shallow for a QB with his reputation. A lot of his success last season was schemed up by Will Stein, who is now the head coach at Kentucky. We’ll see if there’s any dropoff in Oregon’s offensive efficiency with Drew Mehringer calling the plays. There’s reason for optimism — Mehringer was an internal promotion who has called plays before — but I don’t think it’s a certainty. If Moore and Mehringer have a good partnership, the ceiling is unlimited here.
6. Gunner Stockton, Georgia
Gunner Stockton has a game manager reputation, and some of that is well-earned. But I do think he’s better than he gets credit for. He has a 7% CPOE in charted games and rarely takes sacks or turns the ball over. He’s also way, way better with his legs than you’d think from his reputation. Stockton rushed for 462 yards and 10 touchdowns last season and posted a respectable 48% rushing success rate. His average depth of target last season was low, but we’ll see if that creeps up in his second year as a starter.
7. Byrum Brown, Auburn
I’m hesitant to put a QB without P4 experience on this list, but Brown’s underlying metrics are just too good to leave off. A few notables: 10.8% CPOE, 23.1% deep CPOE, 56% rushing success rate at extremely high volume (160 charted rush attempts). Brown will see a big step up in competition at Auburn, but he’s faced P4 opponents before with decent results (more than 7 yards per attempt against both Florida and Miami in 2025). That said, if Brown struggles against Baylor in Week 1, I’ll be quick to adjust expectations for him.
Honorable mentions
Since this is the preseason edition, I’ll hit on a few of the big names that didn’t make the cut.
Arch Manning, Texas: Manning is one of the Heisman Trophy favorites but the underlying metrics from 2025 just don’t back up his preseason hype. He posted a negative CPOE in charted games last season and had a below-average dead-end throw rate (54.7%) over the course of the entire season. I still think there’s reason to be very optimistic about Manning this season, but the numbers were worse than I expected them to be.
Devon Dampier, Utah: Dampier had a boom-or-bust profile over the second half of last season, posting a 33% deep-throw attempt rate in charted games. However, for the full season, Utah’s passing offense wasn’t all that explosive. Dampier was tied for 60th nationally in completions of 20+ yards. He does bring quite a bit of rushing value, though — 55% success rate on 134 attempts.
Darian Mensah, Miami: Mensah graded out as slightly above-average in most of the metrics mentioned in this story. With better coaching and teammates at Miami, he’s certainly a candidate to have a big-time breakout season.
Josh Hoover, Indiana: Hoover was simply too turnover-prone at TCU to justify ranking him here in the preseason. When looking at interceptions that occurred on early downs and within 15 yards of the line of scrimmage, Hoover had 7 over the final 5 games of last season. That’s a rate of 4.2%, which is very high.
Drew Mestemaker, Oklahoma State: Mestemaker had elite CPOE numbers last year, but rarely pushed the ball down field late in the season (7.4 ADOT in charted games). I want to see how he does in the Big 12 (and against Oregon) before elevating him.
Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele, California: Sagapolutele had an awesome freshman season for the Golden Bears in 2025 and is certainly on the radar as a potential elite QB in 2026. His 5.1% CPOE is excellent considering that Cal was at a talent disadvantage for most of its games in 2025.
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Spenser is a news editor for Saturday Down South and covers college football across all Saturday Football brands.
