SEC QB Rankings, Week 5: Diego Pavia is not an underdog anymore
By Matt Hinton
Published:
Quarterbacks: There are a lot of them! Each week throughout the season, we’ll help you keep the game’s most important position in perspective by ranking the SEC starters 1-16 according to highly scientific processes and/or pure gut-level instinct. Previously: Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4.
1. John Mateer, Oklahoma
Mateer emerged from Oklahoma’s 24-17 win over Auburn as the Heisman betting favorite, a distinction he held for roughly 48 hours before OU announced he would be out indefinitely due to a hand injury. For now, indefinitely means just that — Mateer is expected to be back at some point this season, but whether that means 2 weeks or 2 months is TBD. The calendar does offer a bit of cushion with an open date this weekend, followed by a light scrimmage against Kent State in Week 6 before the SEC gauntlet kicks off in earnest against the Oklahoma vs. Texas Red River Showdown.
However prolonged, Mateer’s absence against real competition is a serious blow. Arguably no player in America has meant more to their team in the early going: Through 4 games, Mateer has accounted for more than 80% of the Sooners’ total offense as a passer and rusher, the largest individual share in the SEC. In wins over Michigan and Auburn, that number was above 90%, which is as alarming as it is impressive. How are they going to fill a hole that big? The next man up, sophomore Michael Hawkins Jr., was plainly out of his depth in his brief trial run as a starter last year as a true freshman. The running backs made no impression whatsoever in the 2 games to date that matter. The o-line is banged up. At least the offense has a couple weeks to come up with answers before the Red River date against the Longhorns. After that, each week that Hawkins (or anyone other than Mateer) is listed atop the depth chart, the Sooners’ Playoff odds are likely to get a little longer.
Last week: 1⬌
2. Diego Pavia, Vanderbilt
Last year, I thought Pavia’s reputation actually benefited from most of Vandy’s games unfolding on the lower rungs of the broadcast package, where the legend of the feisty, 5-foot-nothing overachiever who slayed Bama could flourish without his actual game coming in for too much scrutiny. This year, the situation is a little different. The AP-ranked Commodores are kicking butt in the early going, but in front of such marginal audiences so far that it’s not quite sinking in how rapidly they’re rendering the underdog narrative obsolete. If anything, Pavia’s production — as opposed to his got that dog in him demeanor and ongoing legal crusade against NCAA eligibility rules — is being slept on.
There are good reasons for that besides his games being relegated to ESPNU. For one, Pavia is not really considered a pro prospect, and therefore not subject to being dissected to the nth degree by armchair YouTube scouts like, say, Arch Manning. Vanderbilt’s deliberate pace on offense doesn’t help, either: Just like last year, Pavia’s 23 pass attempts per game are the fewest of any full-time SEC starter (injury casualties excluded), limiting his impact in the conventional counting stats. Nor does he generate many viral highlights, postgame press conferences notwithstanding.
But the numbers are there if you know where to look. Pavia ranks among the top dozen QBs nationally in completion percentage (5th), pass efficiency (11th), overall PFF grade (7th), Total QBR (9th) and EPA (9th).
In fact, the further into the weeds you get statistically, the better he gets. If there’s a single metric that sums up Pavia’s impact, it’s Success Rate. As defined by gameonpaper.com, Success Rate is the percentage of all plays that generate a positive EPA; by that measure, Pavia’s 63.7% Success Rate as a passer this season ranks No. 2 nationally behind only Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza. That’s a big leap over last year, when his Success Rate through the air was a mediocre 42.9%, and he’s also 1 of only 4 players in the top 20 as a passer and a rusher. All those positives add up to a Vanderbilt offense averaging 45.7 points per game.
Sure, it’s early. The schedule gets steeper in a hurry after this week’s visit from Utah State, beginning with a Week 6 trip to Alabama and continuing against LSU, Missouri and Texas on consecutive Saturdays. Barring a catastrophe against Utah State, though, Vandy is going to enter that stretch as a ranked team, and arguably as a dark-horse Playoff contender. (For what it’s worth, ESPN’s Football Power Index currently lists the ‘Dores’ CFP chances at 37.3%, 15th-best nationally and slightly better than LSU and Tennessee. It’s September; take that with as many grains of salt as you see fit.) We’ll see how far the momentum from their presumptive 5-0 start can carry them. But if nothing else, I think we’ve seen enough of Pavia at this point to be reasonably certain he’s not about to abruptly turn into a pumpkin.
Last week: 3⬆
3. Taylen Green, Arkansas
While we’re talking stats! Green continues to fill up the box score on a weekly basis, currently ranking No. 1 nationally in total offense and EPA, 4th in Total QBR and 6th in PFF grading. He also continues to play opposite the league’s most flammable defense, and to watch his teammates cough up golden opportunities to win. Saturday’s 32-31 loss at Memphis ended in exactly the same way as Arkansas’ 41-35 loss at Ole Miss in Week 3: With a potentially game-winning drive derailed by a lost fumble in scoring position.
The ending in the Liberty Bowl was harder to swallow on multiple levels — unlike in Oxford, the Razorbacks were favored to win, led for most of the game (by as many as 18 points in the first half), and were in ideal position to salt the game away. They only needed to drain a few more seconds off the clock before setting up for a chip-shot field goal to win, and found pretty much the only remaining way available to them to screw that up.
Green was hardly blameless in the loss, serving up a couple of interceptions in his least efficient outing of the season. Arkansas managed just 3 points in the second half after looking borderline unstoppable in the first. Even on a mediocre afternoon, though, he still accounted for 378 of the Hogs’ 500 total yards and put them in a position to win in the end, to no avail. If it’s going to take week-in, week-out heroics just to drag this team to bowl eligibility, that tells you all you need to know.
Last week: 2⬇
4. Garrett Nussmeier, LSU
Last year’s wild, overtime win over Ole Miss in Baton Rouge wasn’t Nussmeier’s best game, by a long shot. But it did culminate in his best moment: A last-gasp, 13-play, 75-yard touchdown drive in the closing minutes that involved multiple do-or-die conversions, including the 4th-down touchdown strike that forced OT. In the extra frame, Nussmeier hit the late Kyren Lacy for a walk-off TD on LSU’s first snap, sealing a 29-26 triumph in a game the Tigers never led up to that point.
They could do without that much drama in this weekend’s trip to Ole Miss, thanks, but the locals are eager for more fireworks. LSU’s first 3 wins over FBS opponents were all defensively-driven affairs in which Nussmeier struggled to connect downfield and the offense as a whole managed just 5 touchdowns. Vastly improved as the defense has been so far, no one should be surprised if it takes 5 touchdowns just to keep pace on Saturday. In the Tigers’ past 3 trips to Oxford – including the national championship season in 2019 – the average score is LSU 41, Ole Miss 41.
Last week: 4⬌
5. Gunner Stockton, Georgia
Stockton passed his first big test in Week 3, a come-from-behind, overtime thriller at Tennessee in which he showed the Dawgs most of what they needed to see to reassure them their championship-or-bust ambitions are in good hands. He made plays with his arms and legs, led 4 go-ahead scoring drives in the second half and overtime, and generally gave off Stetson Bennett vibes in his first start in a hostile road environment.
Stockton’s 93.1 QBR rating against the Vols is the 2nd-best against an SEC defense so far this season, and his 4th-down touchdown pass to London Humphreys to tie the score late is the most clutch throw.
Now, Dawgs fans could stand to see a little more of that when the game is not on the line. Thirteen of Stockton’s 23 completions in Knoxville were behind the line of scrimmage, per PFF, glorified handoffs that accounted for nearly 40% of his 304 passing yards. The question as Bama rolls into town Saturday off an open date is how many downfield arrows he has in the quiver.
Last week: 5⬌
6. Marcel Reed, Texas A&M
Whatever reservations A&M had about Reed’s long-term prospects after last year’s 1-4 finish are fading fast coming off a landmark Week 3 win at Notre Dame. The Aggies got a week off to bask in the victory and their freshly minted status as a top-10 team. Of course, the last time they cracked the top 10, it was on the heels of Reed’s breakout performance off the bench against LSU last October; they lasted a single week before gradually falling out of the polls altogether in November. (Top 10 to unranked has been an all-too-familiar theme.) Up next: A chance to get off on the right foot in SEC play against one of the teams that contributed to last year’s fadeout, Auburn.
Last week: 6⬌
7. Beau Pribula, Missouri
Pribula continues to be overshadowed by his running backs, especially UL-Monroe transfer Ahmad Hardy, the nation’s 2nd-leading rusher and the runaway favorite for the title of Least Fun to Tackle. For his part, Pribula contributed 75 yards to a dominant rushing effort in the Tigers’ 29-20 win over South Carolina, while get just enough done through the air (16-for-27 for 171 yards) to keep the Gamecocks honest. If that’s the blueprint for the rest of SEC play, they can ride it to November relevance in the Playoff race, at least. But at some point, actually getting over the hump is probably going to require Pribula to beat a real opponent with his arm.
Last week: 8⬆
8. Joey Aguilar, Tennessee
Aguilar has entrenched himself so quickly in Knoxville that a routine, 56-24 beatdown of UAB seems … well, routine. Tennessee scored touchdowns of 7 of 8 offensive possessions against the Blazers before Aguilar called it a day with the Vols leading, 49-10, midway through the 3rd quarter. They could have called it there and covered the 38.5-point spread, but no, gotta get the backups their reps. The amount of money that changes hands in the meaningless throes of garbage time is disgusting.
Last week: 7⬇
9. Ty Simpson, Alabama
Forgive Tide fans if they’re still wary of their new QB1 heading into the latest installment of Alabama vs. Georgia. To his credit, yes, Simpson has been great since setting off the smoke alarms in the Tide’s opening-day meltdown at Florida State, turning in a couple of near-flawless performances against UL-Monroe and Wisconsin in the meantime. But if the initial pangs of the post-Saban era have taught them anything, it’s that nothing is guaranteed from one week to the next – especially on the road. Alabama has lost 5 of its past 6 outside of Tuscaloosa, failing to top 17 points in any of its previous 4 losses.
They’ve been on this ride before. How many sighs of relief did they breathe over Jalen Milroe, only to watch him follow up a god-like performance with an epic flop? Simpson has plenty of time to reassure them he’s not prone to leaving their stomach tied in knots, beginning on Saturday night. As good as he’s looked his past couple times out, though, at this point trust has to be restored one game at a time.
Last week: 9⬌
10. LaNorris Sellers, South Carolina
Sellers is dwelling squarely in the Anthony Richardson Zone: Virtually unlimited potential, yet never quite escaping the bounds of reality. As with Richardson at Florida, when it looks good, it looks really good — Sellers’ highlight reel in Carolina’s loss at Missouri was a series of “wow” moments, including a perfectly placed, 49-yard bomb for a touchdown on 3rd-and-long.
The cliché “there is no defense for the perfect pass” was invented for that kind of pass. Both of Sellers’ touchdowns and the majority of his 302 passing yards at Mizzou came on 5 completions that covered 20+ air yards. In the end, though, the glimpses of his ceiling only made the rest of the night that much more frustrating: Sellers also took 5 sacks, missed opportunities and faded late, with the Gamecocks failing to gain a first down in the 4th quarter of a game they led at the end of the 3rd. Their last 3 possessions combined netted 9 yards on 10 plays.
Granted, the defense got pushed around by Missouri’s ground game, and Sellers was coming off an apparent concussion that knocked him out of a Week 3 loss against Vanderbilt; his absence in the second half of that game goes a long way toward explaining the team’s dismal rankings in total offense (last in the SEC) and scoring (next-to-last). But preseason expectations in Carolina were based largely on the premise that whatever the limitations were across the roster, Sellers’ unique talent was enough to transcend them. An 0-2 SEC start in what were supposed to be 2 of the more winnable conference games is not what anyone had in mind.
Last week: 11⬆
11. Austin Simmons or Trinidad Chambliss, Ole Miss
Simmons was the up-and-coming talent touted as the heir apparent to Jaxson Dart, and might still be. But it’s Chambliss, the dual-threat Division II transfer with the meme-able name, who has been the breakout star of Ole Miss’ 4-0 start, accounting for 834 total yards and 5 touchdowns in Simmons’ absence in a pair of high-scoring wins over Arkansas and Tulane. If it was up to a fan vote, the pecking order for this weekend’s tilt against LSU would be a no-brainer.
Not so much, however, for Lane Kiffin, who told reporters earlier in the week that he was undecided on a starter, and that the decision would hinge mainly on the status of Simmons’ gimpy ankle. “At 100% he was our starting quarterback,” Kiffin said, the past-tense in that response doing some heavy lifting.
Look, Kiffin has more at stake in how this situation plays out than just beating LSU on Saturday.
The Rebels are invested in Simmons long-term, whereas Chambliss — a fifth-year senior who arrived almost as an afterthought following a spring injury to backup AJ Maddox — is in his last year of eligibility. The last thing they need in the portal era is the QB of the future stewing on the sideline.
There’s also the possibility that Kiffin has every intention of sticking with Chambliss and just doesn’t feel like tipping his hand. If the coach says it’s an “or” situation, I’m going to list them here with an or. But I’m watching the same games as everybody else. Voluntarily taking the ball out of one of the hottest hands in the country right now would be a gamble with stakes too high even for Kiffin to risk.
Last week: 13⬆ | n/a
12. Arch Manning, Texas
Given the state of the Arch Manning Discourse, I knew Arch must have enjoyed something like a flawless outing against Sam Houston State when I went to bed on Saturday night without having encountered a single errant throw on social media. The box score confirmed it: Manning finished 18-for-21 passing for 309 yards and 3 touchdowns in a 55-0 blowout that was even more lopsided in the details than the final score implies. (The Longhorns outgained the Bearkats by nearly 500 yards, 607 to 113, with Manning exiting the game midway through the 3rd quarter.) He ran for a couple of scores, as well, one of which supplied the viral highlight of the night when Manning taunted a prone defender in the end zone — not enough to draw a flag from the officials, but more than enough to earn a stern lecture from Mom. Everybody’s a critic.
Last week: 14⬆
13. Jackson Arnold, Auburn
For a unit on the wrong end of a record-setting sack total, Auburn’s pass protection in a 24-17 loss at Oklahoma wasn’t quite the catastrophe it felt like in real time. Per PFF, Jackson Arnold was under duress on just 14 of his 49 drop-backs on the afternoon — a 28.6% pressure rate, about average. Nothing remarkable about that number.
What was remarkable was the Sooners’ finish rate: 10 of those 14 pressures actually resulted in sacks, good for an astronomical pressure-to-sack ratio of 71.4%. (PFF credited Oklahoma with 2 more sack than the official box score, presumably counting a pair of sacks that were wiped off the ledger by holding penalties against Auburn; for consistency’s sake here I’m going with the official number.) For context, the median pressure-to-sack ratio in the SEC this season is about 15%. The fact that 9 different OU defenders got in on the sack party contributed to the impression that Arnold was being hounded from all directions all afternoon, as did the fact that a few of the takedowns — especially a couple of dominant reps by future pro R Mason Thomas in the second half — were the kind that tend to leave a lasting impression of the quarterback as a sitting duck.
More often, the reality is that Arnold’s internal clock is running a tick or two too slow.
Sacks are a recurring issue for Arnold, as Oklahoma fans already knew well. As the Sooners’ starter in 2024, he was among the most sacked quarterbacks in the country despite playing in only 9 games. In his defense, he was under more than his fair share of heat in that role, facing pressure on 40.4% of his drop-backs for a team that was frequently in comeback mode; still, his pressure-to-sack ratio (27.3%) was the worst among regular SEC starters. After Saturday, that number for 2025 now stands at 51.5%, easily the worst in the FBS despite enjoying better protection so far at Auburn than he ever did at OU.
Here’s an idea for keeping him upright: Run the dang ball. Granted, Auburn can’t roll into SEC play and expect to bully a blue-chip defense the way it hammered Baylor’s defense in its season-opening win in Waco. The Tigers ran for 307 yards in that game, with Arnold splitting carries evenly with running backs Damari Alston and Jeremiah Cobb. But it certainly can’t expect anything good to come from Arnold dropping back 49 times in a hostile SEC road environment, either. Alston and Cobb combined for just 13 carries in the loss at Oklahoma, including a grown-man run by Cobb in the 3rd quarter on which he broke 5 tackles en route to a 44-yard gain; he didn’t touch the ball again until Auburn’s last-gasp drive in the 4th. Somewhere in between the ideal run/pass ratio on display in the opener and Saturday’s sack-fest in Norman lies a sustainable balance. Hugh Freeze‘s job may depend now on how quickly he can find it.
Last week: 10⬇
14. Blake Shapen, Mississippi State
I don’t put much stock in the notion that State’s 2024 collapse could have been avoided (or at least mitigated) if Shapen hadn’t bowed out with a season-ending shoulder injury in September, but nothing in the nonconference portion of the slate disproved it, either. The Bulldogs pulled off the Week 2 stunner over Arizona State and otherwise took care of business in convincing fashion against Southern Miss, Alcorn State and Northern Illinois. Now, the real test: Snapping a 12-game losing streak in SEC play. Their first shot comes at home this weekend against Tennessee, making its first visit to Starkville since 2012 – a rare opportunity for the Vols to experience via clanging cowbells what the rest of the league has to endure during “Rocky Top.”
Last week: 12⬇
15. DJ Lagway, Florida
Even setting aside the preseason hype, it’s hard to imagine a worse September than Lagway’s. A deflating loss against an 18-point underdog as time expires. A catastrophic, 5-interception meltdown in the conference opener. A total wipeout at the hands of an in-state rival. All in a span of 15 days. Factor in the messianic expectations and the relentless speculation over his head coach’s future, and the pressure on a barely-20-year-old must be crushing.
Normally, this is where I’d say “at least there’s nowhere to go but up” on the other side of an open date in Week 5. We know Lagway has talent. But after the past 3 weeks, any assurances that the course is due for a correction ring hollow. Three of the next 4 games on the other side of the open date are against Texas, Texas A&M (in College Station) and Georgia in the Cocktail Party. If we learned anything from the Gators’ ongoing skid, it’s that it can always get worse. Now it’s just a matter of how long they’re going to keep Billy Napier around to endure it.
Last week: 15⬌
16. Cutter Boley, Kentucky
If there was any doubt, Mark Stoops went ahead and confirmed Boley as QB1 for this weekend’s trip to South Carolina, mercifully relegating Zach Calzada to the bench for the foreseeable future. Calzada’s tenure atop the depth chart was brutal, yielding 4.4 yards per attempt, 0 touchdowns, and a single completion of 20+ air yards in 2 games. With Calazada sidelined by injury in Week 3, Boley threw for more yards (240) and touchdowns (2) in a 48-23 win over Eastern Michigan than Calzada managed in his 2 starts combined. Promoting the redshirt freshman over a struggling 7th-year journeyman coming out of an open date was an easy call — and hopefully the last one Stoops will have to make at this position for a good long while.
Last week: 16⬌
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Matt Hinton, author of 'Monday Down South' and our resident QB guru, has previously written for Dr. Saturday, CBS and Grantland.
