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 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7 | Week 8 | Week 9 | Week 10 | Week 11 | Week 12 | Week 13.

1. Jaxson Dart | Ole Miss

If all you saw of the Rebels’ 24-17 loss at Florida was their failed comeback attempt at the end, it probably seemed like Dart was having the worst afternoon of his life. Which, in a way, he was. Given multiple shots at evening the score in the 4th quarter, he served up a pair of ugly, game-clinching interceptions in the final 2 minutes, almost certainly torching Ole Miss’ Playoff hopes in the process. In true meltdown fashion, the second pick came immediately after another apparent INT had been overturned on review, during which Dart was clearly emotional. He had to face the music of throwing a season-killing pick twice, and the weight of the moment was written all over his face.

It was hard not to feel for him, because up to that point he’d looked more like a would-be Heisman contender than a goat. Dart hit his marks statistically, accounting for 394 yards (including a season-high 71 yards rushing), 2 touchdowns and an 86.3 Total QBR rating. Beyond the box score, though, he was as impressive as ever; the film eaters at Pro Football Focus credited him with 7 “big-time throws,” a career high and tied for the most of any FBS passer in Week 13. (A big-time throw is “a pass with excellent ball location and timing, generally thrown further down the field and/or into a tighter window,” and while you should obviously take that number with a grain of salt, it tracked with the eye test from where I was sitting. Dart was dealing.)

Notably, at least a couple of those heaters were dropped; PFF dinged Ole Miss receivers for 6 drops in all, part of a running theme of missed opportunities. The Rebels were 0-for-3 in the red zone, twice coming up short on 4th-and-1 plunges by their jumbo “Wildcat” option, JJ Pegues, who prior to Saturday had not once been stopped short of the sticks this season on a dozen carries. It was that kind of afternoon.

Assuming Ole Miss is eliminated from the Playoff race (a safe assumption, even accounting for late-breaking chaos), Dart’s legacy in Oxford ends there: Just short of the line he needed to cross to separate himself from the crowded tier of Ole Miss QBs who got the Rebels within sniffing distance of national relevance but not quite all the way there. He’ll leave with a laundry list of school records, including total offense and career wins as a starter. But in the end, he didn’t do anything that Matt Corral, Chad Kelly, Bo Wallace, Jevan Snead, and, yes, Eli Manning didn’t do in the same position. Not bad company to be in, in the long run. For now, it just seems like an enormous missed opportunity.
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Last week: 1⬌

2. Carson Beck | Georgia

What a strange year. Two weeks ago, Beck’s stock was plunging along with his team’s in the wake of a 28-10 flop at Ole Miss, the culmination of a season-long flirtation with mediocrity. Now, heading into the annual rivalry date against Georgia Tech, Beck is back to looking like a model of stability as the Dawgs are on the verge of reclaiming the title of Team Nobody Wants to Play in the postseason. Has he actually turned a corner? Or, in a season in which no SEC quarterback seems capable of going more than 3 consecutive weeks without looking like a basket case, is he just the familiar face furthest removed from his last setback? (Which, again, was in Week 11.) For a guy with as much football under his belt as Beck, the next couple weeks can still tell us a lot about his trajectory as Georgia engages championship-or-bust mode.
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Last week: 3⬆

3. Jalen Milroe | Alabama

Which version of Milroe am I ranking here? The one who ran circles around Georgia and LSU in 2 of the most dominant individual performances of the year? Or the one who crashed and burned Saturday in a season-killing, 24-3 debacle at Oklahoma? How do you reconcile that gap? One week he looks like God’s gift to the position, the next he looks primed for the bench.

Even before last week, Milroe had never managed to completely shed the boom-or-bust tag that he earned early in his tenure as a starter. This is the guy, after all, who followed up his Heisman-worthy effort against Georgia in Week 5 with a bona fide midseason slump spanning nearly the entire month of October. Even at his most mercurial, though, he has never bottomed out as thoroughly as he did in Norman, where he finished 112-for-6 passing with 4 turnovers (including a ghastly pick-6, replayed round the clock on ESPN in the days since) and an abysmal 15.4 QBR rating, a career low by a mile.

He made no impact as a runner, and Bama failed to score a touchdown for the first time since the classic 9-6 slugfest against LSU in 2011. That game was against a championship-caliber defense that the Tide would see again with the national title on the line; on Saturday, they were laid low by a 2-touchdown underdog happy just to be eking out bowl eligibility.

Where does he go from here? The standing assumption since the end of last season has been that Milroe (a redshirt junior) would likely pass on his final season of eligibility for the NFL Draft, where as recently as last week he was still viewed as a raw but viable prospect with first-round potential. But it was difficult to take anything viable away from Saturday night, the most damaging entry in the BUST column to date — especially given the fact that it came in Milroe’s 25th career start, with a Playoff slot on the line against an opponent just playing out the string on a deflating season of its own. That’s the kind of meltdown that makes you take stock of your assumptions. Is he still viable at the next level? Would a 5th year in Tuscaloosa move the needle? A change of scenery? The talent has never been in doubt. But at this late stage of his career, here we are, still trying to figure out how to make heads or tails of the results.
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Last week: 2⬇

4. Quinn Ewers | Texas

Ewers is reportedly practicing this week and expected to play against Texas A&M after tweaking his ankle in the Longhorns’ 31-14 win over Kentucky. He went into power-saver mode at halftime, attempting just 5 passes in the second half in a game Texas had well in hand. At this point, the big question is what does the offense look like when the game isn’t well in hand? Outside of their lone defeat against Georgia, the ‘Horns have trailed for a grand total of 8 minutes in their 10 wins, all in the first half.
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Last week: 4⬌

5. LaNorris Sellers | South Carolina

Few teams in America are hotter than Carolina, winner of 5 straight, and no quarterback has improved his stock over that span more than Sellers, whose brain appears to be catching up with his rare combination of size and mobility by the week. At midseason, the Gamecocks were 3-3, and I had my doubts about Sellers’ long-term viability. A month later,  they’re ranked No. 15 and mapping out a dark-horse path to the Playoff heading into Saturday’s showdown at No. 12 Clemson.

It’s a longshot — 20.1%, per ESPN’s Football Power Index — but not that long. Those are better CFP odds than Ole Miss (6.7%) or Texas A&M (6.2%), which still controls its own fate; they’re only slightly behind Alabama (29.6%), mostly owing to the fact that Carolina has a much stiffer test on deck this weekend at Clemson. That game was a toss-up as of midweek, with Clemson listed as a mere 1.5-point favorite at home, via FanDuel.

Win it to finish 9-3, and suddenly the Gamecocks could find themselves at the front of the queue to benefit from any 11th-hour chaos in the top 10. But first things first: They have to win it.
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Last week: 7⬆

6. Marcel Reed | Texas A&M

Reed was the least of the Aggies’ problems in their quadruple-overtime loss at Auburn, accounting for 363 total yards and rallying A&M from a 21-0 deficit to force OT. In fact, the Aggies actually led following go-ahead touchdowns at the end of regulation and in the first overtime, needing only a defensive stop in either situation to close out the comeback; they didn’t get it in either one. Even in the end, the failed 2-point conversion that ended the game in the 4th overtime was a flat-out drop on a throw that Reed could not have possibly made any easier.

Anyway, on to Texas. Thanks to their 5-0 start in conference play, the Aggies are still alive in the Playoff hunt if they bounce back to beat the Longhorns this weekend and Georgia in the SEC Championship Game. But that and is non-negotiable. Whatever slim margin for error existed before the trip to Jordan-Hare just got spent.
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Last week: 6⬌

7. Garrett Nussmeier | LSU

Let me take this opportunity to say that, from top to bottom, this week’s order is as muddled and indecisive as any in the storied history of these rankings. The top 4 (Dart, Beck, Milroe and Ewers) have held their ground all season mainly because they’re established vets with a track record of leading Playoff-caliber teams over multiple seasons, not necessarily because they’ve clearly separated themselves from the rest of the field in 2024. Dart’s production stands out on paper, but he isn’t going to appear on more than a handful of Heisman ballots, if that. Beyond the top tier, though, no one else has made a sustained move or compelling case for supplanting them, either. The gap between No. 5 and, say, No. 12 — a range consisting of both cromulent vets and obviously gifted up-and-comers who aren’t quite there yet — is basically nonexistent. Shoot, I can easily imagine the guy at No. 12 this week (no spoilers) starting out atop the preseason rankings next year, depending on who else stays or goes. The order is just a conceit of the format; it’s not real and is certainly not definitive. Thanks for understanding.
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Last week: 9⬆

8. Nico Iamaleava | Tennessee

The jury is very much out on Iamaleava, who has often been in the passenger’s seat while the defense and running game have driven the Vols to the cusp of a Playoff bid. That blueprint will get them past Vanderbilt this weekend and into the CFP field at 10-2. But if they’re going to make any noise when they get there — almost certainly on the road, probably somewhere cold — they need their most touted player to take the next step ASAP.
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Last week: 8⬌

9. Brady Cook | Missouri

Cook has rarely looked better than he did Saturday in a 39-20 win at Mississippi State, setting career highs vs. an SEC opponent for yards per attempt (13.4), pass efficiency (204.1) and Total QBR (94.2) on a hyper-efficient 15-for-20 passing. Sure, Mississippi State’s blistered secondary only technically qualifies as an SEC opponent, but at the end of a turbulent senior campaign, he’ll take it where he can get it.
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Last week: 9⬆

10. Diego Pavia | Vanderbilt

Pavia has been a godsend for Vandy, but he hasn’t had enough help as the offense has stagnated over the second half of the season. Altogether, he’s accounted for just shy of 75% of the Commodores’ total yards on the year, the highest individual share in the conference.
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Last week: 5⬇

11. Taylen Green | Arkansas

Green remains the most difficult player to pin down on this list from one week to the next. On one hand, he’s been more “intriguing” in his first season as a Hog than actually good, alternating eye-opening performances against the bottom half of the schedule with less productive outings against the top. (Remember, he bowed out of Arkansas’ biggest win by far, a defensively-driven, 19-14 stunner over Tennessee in Week 7, with the Razorbacks trailing 14-10 early in the 4th quarter; backup Malachi Singleton presided over the eventual game-winning drive.) As a sheer athletic spectacle at 6-6, 230 pounds, though, there’s still a lot of optimism about Green’s potential for growth in 2025, assuming he returns to school for a 5th year. Of course, “potential for growth” and “5th year” rarely belong in the same sentence, but if you’re going to make an exception, this is the guy to make it for.
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Last week: 9⬌

12. DJ Lagway | Florida

Lagway is still more of a project than an every-down cornerstone, but the learning curve is shrinking fast and the highlight reel tells you all you really need to know about his future. Whe he’s on, Lagway aces the “know it when you see it” test with room to spare: His average completion this season has gained 18.7 yards, best in the nation among players with at least 100 attempts. He’s PFF’S top-graded passer nationally on passes of 20+ air yards, completing an FBS-best 60.7% of his downfield attempts for an FBS-best 24.3 yards per attempt. In Florida’s 24-17 upset over Ole Miss, he completed multiple passes with defenders clinging to his lower body and pulled off some next-level arm slot stuff with defenders in his face.

Now, when not going viral, Lagway’s production has been pedestrian, predictably for a true freshman with 5 starts to his credit. He’s not breaking the bank in terms of QBR, EPA, or other advanced metrics. His completion percentage on attempts of 20+ air yards is higher than it is when throwing short of 20 yards. The offense bogged down for entire quarters at a time in the Gators’ wins over LSU and Ole Miss, which were arguably bigger breakthroughs for the defense (and the pass rush, specifically) than they were for the quarterback. But when the ceiling is as high as Lagway’s plainly is, the typical freshman caveats barely register. More than any other factor, his presence is the reason the Billy Napier administration is not merely surviving for another year, but has a genuine opportunity to thrive.
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Last week: 12⬌

13. Payton Thorne | Auburn

Admittedly, I’m at the point (presumably along with a lot of Auburn fans) where I’m less interested in the final throes of Thorne’s forgettable run as QB1 than in what comes next. But credit where credit is due: Saturday’s quadruple-OT upset over Texas A&M was his best outing of the season en route to the best win of Hugh Freeze’s tenure, by far. If he comes through with another competitive effort against Alabama — and honestly, just about anything seems possible right now where Bama is concerned — at the very least Thorne can go out having earned some grudging respect for hanging in there to the end.
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Last week: 13⬌

14. Jackson Arnold | Oklahoma

I’m going to pass on speculating what Arnold’s out-of-nowhere, 131-yard rushing performance against Alabama means for his future as the Sooners’ starting quarterback; given that he managed just 68 yards through the air on 9-of-11 passing, possibly not as much as the big emotion of the scene in Norman implied. Instead, I’ll just say good for him. This space has been as harsh on Arnold across an undeniably disappointing season as anybody, but it’s worth remembering that he’s still young, he’s been operating in adverse circumstances — virtually the entire two-deep at wideout has been on the shelf all season, among other injury woes — and he still has a shot at salvaging his status as QB1 heading into the crucial December portal window. Whether he ultimately stays or goes, at least he managed to give some fleeting glimpse of what he brings to the table before decision time. Now, let’s see how sustainable the good vibes are in this weekend’s finale at LSU.
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Last week: 16⬆

15. Michael Van Buren Jr. | Mississippi State

Van Buren got off to an intriguing start as QB1 but has hit the growing pains over the past month. In three games in October (all against SEC opponents), he averaged 7.9 yards per attempt with 8 touchdowns; in 3 games in November (including a gimme against UMass), he’s averaged 6.4 ypa with only 2 touchdowns. Any glimmer of hope the Bulldogs might have of ambushing Ole Miss begins with a reminder of Van Buren’s upside.
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Last week: 13⬇

16. Cutter Boley | Kentucky

Let the Boley era begin? After weeks of speculation, the true freshman replaced beleaguered starter Brock Vandagriff at halftime of the Wildcats’ 31-14 loss at Texas, didn’t embarrass himself against arguably the nation’s best defense, and set himself up to make his first career start this weekend against Louisville. No pressure, kid: All that’s on the line against the Cardinals is a 5-game winning streak in the series and the inside track on the starting job in 2025.
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Last week: n/a

Matt Hinton

Matt Hinton, author of 'Monday Down South' and our resident QB guru, has previously written for Dr. Saturday, CBS and Grantland.