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 1-14 according to highly scientific processes and/or pure gut-level instinct. Previously: Week 1 … Week 2 … Week 3 … Week 4 … Week 5 … Week 6 … Week 7 … Week 8.

1. Jayden Daniels, LSU

For weeks now this spot has been reserved for the litany of statistical categories in which Daniels is at or near the top of the national leaderboard, a list that get a little longer with each entry. Just sticking to the big ones, he’s hitting LSU’s open date ranked No. 1 nationally in total offense, total touchdowns, yards per attempt, overall efficiency and EPA, with widening margins by the week. As a team, the Tigers lead the nation in total offense, scoring offense, yards per play, and a host of other columns, as well. He really is just one big game in Tuscaloosa away from invoking the specter of J– B—-w.

Instead of waxing rhapsodic again about all the ways Daniels is lighting it up, this week I thought I’d take the opportunity to drill down on one of his flaws – some obscure area where the needle is merely resting in the middle of the gauge. And folks … I got nothing. Sorry. In terms of efficiency, in terms of volume, as a deep passer, as a runner, under pressure, from a clean pocket, on 3rd downs, in the red zone, on intermediate throws, on throws outside the numbers, in the first quarter, in the fourth quarter, with play-action, without play-action: He’s excelled across the board.

On paper, the worst thing you can say about Daniels’ season at the moment is that he turned in his only mediocre performance in LSU’s biggest game to date, a 45-24 loss to Florida State on opening night that remains a major drag on the Tigers’ Playoff ambitions even if they win out. (“Mediocre,” in this case, while still accounting for 410 total yards in a losing effort.)

As an NFL prospect, he remains on the spindly side as a 5th-year senior, which makes his weird tendency to open himself up to gratuitous hits all the more alarming; despite his vast improvement this season as a deep-ball passer, he will never boast a cannon for an arm. And of course, there’s still a little ways to go before the final verdict, beginning with the season-defining trip to Alabama, where plenty of once-promising LSU seasons have hit the skids in the past.

Right now, though? The man is in the midst of one historic heater until further notice. Check back in on the other side of the bye.
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(Last week: 1⬌)

2. Carson Beck, Georgia

In many ways this weekend’s rivalry date with Florida marks the real starting line of the Bulldogs’ season, and Beck arrives looking like a standard-issue Georgia quarterback in the Kirby Smart era — well-protected, efficient and perfectly willing to cede the highlights to his surrounding cast. Two big questions as he wades into the deep end of the schedule: 1), what happens if/when an opposing defense finally succeeds in turning up the heat in a competitive game? And 2), how does the offense adjust with Brock Bowers on the shelf indefinitely? There’s certainly no shortage of candidates for absorbing Bowers’ touches, but identifying a new go-to target when the Dawgs gotta have it is a top priority.
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(Last week: 2⬌)

3. Jaxson Dart, Ole Miss

No one is about to mistake Dart for Cam Newton or anything, but even more so than last year he’s an integral part of Ole Miss’ ground game. For the season, he’s on pace to run for 800 yards (excluding negative yardage on sacks), and ranks 7th among FBS quarterbacks in Rushing EPA. In the Rebels’ 28-21 win at Auburn, he made 2 of the pivotal plays of the game with his legs: The first, an exquisitely executed, 29-yard touchdown run on 4th-and-1 in the 1st quarter; the second, an 18-yard scramble that extended Ole Miss’ 4th and final touchdown drive in the 4th.

Don’t expect much wiggle, but get him moving north-south at 220 pounds and Dart has an extra gear in the open field. The more involved he is as a runner, the more defenses have to think about, and the more explosive the Rebels’ play-action-oriented attack will usually be.
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(Last week: 3⬌)

4. Brady Cook, Missouri

Compared to his steadily escalating output over the previous month, Cook has turned in relatively pedestrian stat lines each of the past 2 weeks against Kentucky and South Carolina … and Mizzou has won both games handily, by a combined score of 72-33. It’s nice to know your quarterback is capable of putting up eye-opening numbers on any given Saturday, and even nicer to know you don’t necessarily need him to in order to win. At 7-1, the Tigers are already guaranteed their first winning record since 2018; with Georgia on deck in Week 11, they can spend their week off thinking much bigger.
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(Last week: 5⬆)

5. Spencer Rattler, South Carolina

On the other sideline, Rattler struggled at Mizzou, posting season-lows for efficiency (98.1) and QBR (19.4) while getting sacked 5 times in the course of Carolina’s 3rd straight loss. With that, the enormous gap between his performance at home and on the road this season widened a little bit more. In 3 home games (2 vs. SEC opponents, Mississippi State and Florida), Rattler has averaged a stellar 12.3 yards per attempt with 10 touchdowns to 1 interception; in 4 games away from home (including a neutral-site date vs. North Carolina), he has averaged 6.4 ypa with 1 touchdown to 4 INTs.

The good news: After this weekend’s trip to Texas A&M, the Gamecocks’ last 4 games are all at home. The bad news: Barring an upset in College Station, they’re going to have to win all 4 just to be bowl-eligible.
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(Last week: 4⬇)

6. Jalen Milroe, Alabama

Volatile young quarterbacks with big-league arm strength come and go, but even within that category Milroe is an enigma: A volatile young QB who actually gets better on obvious passing downs. For the season, he’s an impressive 17-for-25 passing on 3rd-and-7 or longer, with 15 first downs, 5 touchdowns, and an astronomical 253.3 efficiency rating — best in the nation on 3rd-and-long attempts. If he ever figures out the routine stuff, the kid is going to be pretty special.
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(Last week: 6⬌)

7. Graham Mertz, Florida

Mertz, on the other hand, is a quintessential “game manager,” and within that distinction he’s fulfilled his most important mission: Taking care of the ball. Per Pro Football Focus, Mertz has been responsible for a single “turnover-worthy play” on 256 drop-backs, good for an FBS-best 0.4 percent. If you’re thinking, “wait a minute, I could have sworn Mertz has thrown 2 interceptions,” well, right you are. But the PFF number reflects the fact that at least 1 of them was not his fault, and in fact the other one arguably wasn’t, either — both were deflections that hit his intended receiver in the hands. A good rule of thumb for any quarterback seeking to upset the No. 1 team in the country: Don’t throw it to their guys.
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(Last week: 8⬆)

8. Joe Milton III, Tennessee

Milton’s first-half performance against Alabama represented his best half of the season, by far: 16-for-22, 175 yards, 2 TDs, 0 INTs, 0 sacks. Tennessee led at halftime, 20-7. The second half? Not so much: After the break, Milton was 12-for-19 for 96 yards, didn’t throw a touchdown, and got sacked 3 times, including a strip sack in the 4th quarter that Bama took to the house to effectively put a 34-20 comeback win on ice.

Incredibly, given the track record of Josh Heupel’s offense, the quarterbacks who have manned it over the years, and the expectations for Milton, he still has yet to pass for 300 yards or more than 2 touchdowns in any game this season.
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(Last week: 9⬆)

9. KJ Jefferson, Arkansas

What’s wrong with KJ? This season, his 5th in the program and 3rd as a starter, was supposed to cement his place among the most productive QBs in school history and serve as a launchpad to the next level. Instead, his stock has sagged with each new entry in an ongoing, 6-game losing streak, bottoming out Saturday in a 7-3 loss to Mississippi State that was every bit as unwatchable as the final score implied. Arkansas’ only points came on its opening series, following an interception that set up the offense at the MSU 35-yard line. In the end, that was as far into opposing territory as the Razorbacks advanced the entire game.

It’s tempting to blame the Hogs’ problems on everyone but the quarterback. Their only above-the-fold playmaker, RB Rocket Sanders, has barely played due to a sore knee, hasn’t been anywhere near 100% when he has, and may be on the shelf for the rest of the year. The most promising receiver in the early going, true freshman TE Luke Hasz, suffered a season-ending injury in Week 5. The top wideouts, first-year transfers Andrew Armstrong and Isaac TeSlaa, both portaled in from the D-II ranks.

The starting tackles, Andrew Chamblee and Patrick Kutas, both rank among PFF’s 5 lowest-graded pass blockers in the SEC. Altogether, Jefferson has been sacked more times (32) than any other FBS quarterback except Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders (33), who has 87 more drop-backs on the year. Offensive coordinator Dan Enos, whose “pro-style” scheme was touted as a boon to Jefferson’s pro prospects, was fired on Sunday, making him the nation’s first in-season coaching casualty of 2023. It’s not out of the question that head coach Sam Pittman, whose reservoir of goodwill is dwindling fast, could be next.

Still, amid all of that Jefferson has looked increasingly off in his own right. His numbers have cratered across the board, most notably a touchdown-to-interception ratio that has plummeted from 5-to-1 over the previous two seasons to just 2-to-1 this year. Against Mississippi State — arguably the SEC’s worst pass defense — he was so far off-target as the game slipped away that it was hard not to wonder about his health. Jefferson was just 3-for-11 on attempts of 10+ yards downfield (most of those coming in the 4th quarter), and turned in career lows by far for yards per attempt (3.1), Total QBR (15.8) and overall efficiency (81.1). Every aspect of the offense was out of sync, leaving the Homecoming crowd in Fayetteville visibly disgusted.

How much difference is changing the play-caller midstream really going to make? If there’s a silver lining, it’s that a) Arkansas has a week off to turn the page under the interim OC, Kenny Guiton, and b) It can’t get much worse. But the Razorbacks would have to run the table in November just to finish 6-6, which is such a remote possibility at this point it’s hardly worth mentioning. Just cracking the win column against Florida, Auburn or Missouri to avoid a winless finish in conference play will be daunting enough. In the meantime, the question of whether and how Jefferson will opt to spend his final year of eligibility in 2024 suddenly looms large.
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(Last week: 8⬇)

10. Devin Leary, Kentucky

Leary is off to a rocky start in SEC play, completing just 47.5% of his attempts for 5.2 yards a pop over 4 conference games. But he hasn’t exactly gotten a lot of help, either: In the same span, PFF flagged his underachieving receivers for 11 drops. (Leary has also had 8 passes batted at the line, most in the Power 5.) The Wildcats are banking on better chemistry down the stretch coming off a much-needed open date.
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(Last week: 11⬆)</em

11. Max Johnson, Texas A&M

No one needed a week off more than Johnson, who faced pressure on 44 of his 73 drop-backs — an astounding 60.3% — in back-to-back losses to Alabama and Tennessee. Well-rested, the Aggies are back home this weekend against South Carolina, which ranks at or near the bottom of the conference in every major defensive category. The Aggies’ failure to get over against the Bamas and Tennessees of the world is frustrating enough; a 3rd consecutive L, this time against the Gamecocks, is 1 they absolutely cannot afford without setting off alarm sirens over the state of the program at maximum decibels.
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(Last week: 12⬆)

12. Will Rogers or Mike Wright, Mississippi State

Rogers’ run of 39 consecutive starts came to an end on Saturday due to a shoulder injury that sidelined him in the Bulldogs’ 7-3 win at Arkansas — the lowest-scoring game in SEC play since Alabama beat LSU 10-0 in 2016. (For a lower total, you have to go all the way back to the infamous 3-2 game between Mississippi State and Auburn in 2008.) With their starter looking on and their defense in control, the Bulldogs slowed the pace to a crawl: They ran just 48 plays, only 12 of them passes.

Rogers’ status for this weekend’s tilt with Auburn remains TBD, per Zach Arnett, whose standard line re: injuries is that every player on the team is day-to-day. Whoever is behind center, it’s a pivotal game in Mississippi State’s season. At 4-3, the Bulldogs need 2 more wins to secure bowl eligibility, one of which is in the bag against a rock-bottom version of Southern Miss on Nov. 18. But if Auburn doesn’t fall into the win column, getting the other at the expense of Kentucky, Texas A&M or Ole Miss in November is a dicier proposition.

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(Last week: 10⬇ / N/A)

13. Payton Thorne, Auburn

The Tigers have effectively abandoned the notion of a downfield passing game, and frankly it’s hard to blame them. In SEC play, Thorne is a meager 1-for-11 on attempts of 20+ yards, the lone completion coming in a Week 7 loss at LSU with Auburn trailing by 24 points in the second half. (Backups Robby Ashford and Holden Geriner are a combined 1-for-7 in the same span.) In the quarterbacks’ defense, who would be on the other end? I defy anyone who isn’t a diehard Auburn fan to name an active wide receiver without looking it up. RB Jarquez Hunter just accounted for the team’s longest reception of the season in Saturday’s loss to Ole Miss, covering 47 yards on a pass thrown 10 yards beyond the line of scrimmage.
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(Last week: 13⬌)

14. Ken Seals or AJ Swann, Vanderbilt

Short-term, the ‘Dores are just trying to figure out who gives them the best chance to win one of their remaining f4our games, all vs. conference opponents. Beyond that, the question gets trickier: The odds that Vandy manages to keep both Seals and Swann out of the portal in 2024 are slim, meaning the course of the competition over the next few weeks is likely to determine the outlook for next year, too, when Clark Lea’s job could be on the line. On that note, it’s worth remembering that although Seals has been on campus two years longer, between the free COVID year in 2020 and a redshirt in ’22 he actually has the same remaining eligibility as Swann, a true sophomore — just one more way that they’re almost impossible to tell apart.
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(Last week: 14⬌)

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