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.

1. Jayden Daniels, LSU

The biggest knock on Daniels’ game since he arrived at LSU — even from his own coach — has been his reluctance to let it rip. On that note, his performance in the Tigers’ 41-14 win at Mississippi State was a breakthrough: Daniels was 4-for-4 for 152 yards and 2 touchdowns on attempts 20+ yards downfield, all of it coming in collaboration with his favorite target, Malik Nabers.

Altogether, Daniels and Nabers connected 13 times for 239 yards and rightly shared the title of SEC Offensive Player of the Week, with Daniels adding 2 more TDs as a runner, for good measure. I’m still not sold on his potential as a long-term Heisman candidate, but if Saturday was a sign of more explosive things to come he could be in store for a very Hendon Hooker-esque senior season. (Statistically, that is, not in terms of the ending.) This weekend’s tilt with Arkansas will serve as a very interesting heat check.
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(Last week: 2⬆)

2. Jaxson Dart

It’s Alabama Week for the Rebels — a huge opportunity to graduate from dark horse to bona fide contender in the SEC West, and for Dart to make a similar leap into the upper echelon of dual-threat quarterbacks nationally. If that sounds familiar, it should: Presented with the same opportunity last November, Ole Miss blew a 10-point lead against Bama in Oxford, along with its shot at the division crown. (Not including recent arriver Texas A&M, Ole Miss remains the only team in the West that has yet to win the division since 1992, which its fans love to be reminded.) Dart, a rising star over the first half of the season, struggled down the stretch to the extent that Lane Kiffin felt compelled to add 2 transfers over the winter to compete for his job.

The date falls earlier on the calendar this time, but the stakes on Saturday are just as high, and since fending off his would-be usurpers, Dart’s stock is surging again. Three weeks in, he boasts the SEC’s top passer rating and is currently tied for the national lead (along with Caleb Williams) at 12.5 yards per attempt. He also just became the first SEC quarterback this year to top 200 yards passing and 100 rushing against an FBS opponent, accounting for 3 touchdowns in the process in a 48-23 rout over Georgia Tech. Per ESPN, only 1 other Power 5 quarterback (North Carolina’s Drake Maye) has accounted for a higher EPA as both a passer and a runner.

Of course, Kiffin didn’t challenge Dart’s incumbency for the sake of big September stat lines against the likes of Georgia Tech and Tulane. The West at the moment is arguably as winnable as it has ever been, but the trip to Tuscaloosa is just the first test of many: LSU is on deck in Week 5, with Texas A&M (in Oxford) and Georgia (in Athens) looming in November, to say nothing of the rest of the conference slate in between. Whether the Rebels are ready to level up or not, at least they won’t have to wait until the weather turns to find out.
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(Last week: 4⬆)

3. KJ Jefferson, Arkansas

I had Jefferson pegged for a monster year after he passed on the NFL Draft, despite the presence of a new offensive coordinator and a mostly new, totally obscure bunch of wideouts. Through 3 games — the most recent one a 38-31 loss to BYU in which he was sacked 4 times and picked off for the first time this season — there’s no sign of that optimism coming to fruition. Treylon Burks and Matt Landers are not walking through that door, and it’s unclear at this point exactly when Rocket Sanders will be, either.
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(Last week: 1⬇)

4. Spencer Rattler, South Carolina

Rattler has looked sharp for the better part of both of South Carolina’s losses, only to wind up ducking for cover as his protection visibly disintegrates in comeback mode. Per PFF, Rattler faced pressure on 45 of his combined 106 drop-backs against North Carolina and Georgia, resulting in 11 sacks and an interception.
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(Last week: 3⬇)

5. Conner Weigman, Texas A&M

Weigman’s conventional stats are good, but based on a couple of the rankings’ favored advanced metrics he’s playing as well as any quarterback in the country. He ranks 2nd nationally in ESPN’s Total QBR metric (behind only Washington’s Michael Penix Jr.), while also posting the 2nd-highest grade nationally according to the film eaters at Pro Football Focus (behind only Miami’s Tyler Van Dyke, who outdueled Weigman in Texas A&M’s Week 2 loss to the Canes). Take that for what it’s worth at this early stage of the season, especially given that the Aggies’ 2 wins have come at the expense of New Mexico and UL-Monroe. But in a relatively down year for high-wattage star power at the top of the list, he’s on the fast track. Next up: Auburn.
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(Last week: 8⬆)

6. Carson Beck, Georgia

Beck has put up similar lines in each of his first 3 starts, finishing with somewhere between 21 and 27 completions for somewhere between 260 and 300 yards — the sweet spot for keeping the locals satisfied while cruising well below the national radar. For now, he still falls squarely into the “game manager” column, with an SEC-low 9.3% of his total attempts traveling 20+ yards downfield.
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(Last week: 9⬆)

7. Brady Cook, Missouri

Mizzou’s dramatic, 30-27 upset over Kansas State was the best win of Eli Drinkwitz’s tenure as head coach, and the best performance of Cook’s tenure as QB1: He threw for a career-high 365 yards, accounted for 3 total touchdowns (2 passing, 1 rushing), and didn’t commit a turnover en route to his first W against a ranked opponent. Even more satisfying, it came almost exactly one year after his worst performance, a 128-yard, 2-INT debacle at K-State that cast immediate doubt on his ability to survive as an SEC starter, much less thrive. Cook spent the rest of the season battling against the perception that he was a liability, and much of the offseason enduring calls for Drinkwitz to pursue a veteran transfer to replace him. Among all the other reasons that Saturday marked a high point, it was a great example of growing pains paying off.
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(Last week: 11⬆)

8. Devin Leary, Kentucky

Leary has yet to break a proper sweat as a Wildcat, putting up cromulent-at-best stat lines in his first 3 games against Ball State, Eastern Kentucky, and Akron. He hopes to continue the trend this weekend against Vanderbilt before the schedule starts to get a little steeper.
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(Last week: 10⬆)

9. Joe Milton III, Tennessee

Milton plummets this week following an uninspired outing at Florida, putting an end to the notion that he would pick up the offense right where Hendon Hooker left off last year. As willing as Milton is to unleash the artillery, lingering concerns over his inconsistency and inaccuracy have borne out: After connecting on a long touchdown pass on Tennessee’s first series of the game, he was just 2-for-8 on attempts of 20+ yards against the Gators, including a killer interception on a ball that should have never left his hands.

Even the strongest arm in football didn’t have a prayer of making hay out of that; the Gators turned the subsequent short field into a touchdown to extend their early lead to 19-7, and the deficit never fell below double digits again. Much else went wrong for the Vols, including a mediocre ground game and a defense that struggled to get off the field. (Florida’s lo-fi offense rang up a 15-minute advantage in time of possession.) But if they were counting on explosive plays in the passing game to overcome those issues again, it might be time to go back to the drawing board.

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(Last week: 6⬇)

10. Jalen Milroe

The decision to bench Milroe in Week 3 served mainly as proof that the Tide had it right the first time around. With Milroe relegated to a bystander, understudies Tyler Buchner and Ty Simpson combined to deliver the worst quarterback performance of the Saban era. Together, they finished 10-for-23 for 107 yards against what should have been a thoroughly overmatched South Florida defense, a dismal line mitigated only by a) the equally dismal weather in Tampa, and b) zero turnovers. Otherwise, the results were grim. Buchner, the Notre Dame transfer, couldn’t hit the side of a barn in the first half; Simpson, the former 5-star, was sacked 5 times in the second. The defense and ground game did their part to avert disaster in a 17-3 win, but coming fresh on the heels of a Week 2 loss to Texas, the implications for the rest of the season set off every alarm in a 10-state radius.

No suspense this week: Milroe is back on top of the depth chart for the SEC opener vs. Ole Miss, with arguably better job security now that Bama has gotten a good look at the alternatives than he had before he was demoted. The upside to Milroe’s game is obvious enough: His freakish combination of arm strength and athleticism opens up the entire playbook, forces opponents to defend the entire field, and maximizes the offense’s quick-strike capabilities by ground and air. The downside is pretty obvious, too: A pair of unforced interceptions against Texas led directly to 10 points for the Longhorns, the eventual margin of defeat.

Saban has certainly mellowed out these past few years, but conceding the possibility of crippling mistakes in exchange for the possibility of explosive plays seems like the kind of bargain that could send him to the rocker. Milroe, a redshirt sophomore with 3 career starts, is still very much on the upward slope of the growth curve; given enough time and patience, the finished product might be worth it — eventually. But since when does Alabama have the luxury of patience? That’s the logic of “rebuilding,” a stage in the championship cycle the Tide have transcended for more than a decade. The prospect of even 1 year off the pace feels like a crisis-level event. Unless Milroe is a remarkably fast learner, though, that’s the best they can hope for.
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(Last week: 7⬇)

11. Payton Thorne, Auburn

The most notable part of Auburn’s blowout win over Samford was Thorne’s 123-yard, 2-touchdown effort as a runner, nearly tripling his previous career high on the ground. If Thorne can run, where does that leave Robby Ashford, who has taken up refuge in a Wildcat role after losing the starting job he held for most of 2022? Possibly contemplating a position change, which could already have been well underway as soon as Thorne portaled in from Michigan State in May, if not sooner. It was clear by the end of last season that Ashford didn’t have a future as an SEC starter, but his athleticism is wasted on clipboard duty.
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(Last week: 12⬆)

12. Graham Mertz, Florida

Mertz isn’t going to win any beauty contests for his stature or his game, but when Billy Napier’s offense is working, less from the quarterback is more. Mertz’s season to date is a tale of two games: His high-volume stat line at Utah (31-for-44, 333 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT) yielded a dismal 36.1 rating per ESPN’s Total QBR metric, dragged down by the interception (not his fault) and 5 sacks (only kinda his fault). Contrast that to his relatively pedestrian line in the Gators’ win over Tennessee (19-for-24, 166 yards, 1 TD), which produced a stellar 91.6 rating in a game in which Mertz didn’t atempt a pass 20+ yards downfield. You don’t need to understand the inner workings of QBR to get the gist: The less he has to do beyond hitting his marks, the better.
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(Last week: 13⬆)

13. Will Rogers, Mississippi State

Rogers avoids the basement here out of respect for his production and experience over the course of his career. Speaking strictly for the current season, though, it’s off to a brutal start: Coming off a nightmare game against LSU, he ranks last among SEC starters in almost every major category, including Total QBR, overall PFF grade, yards per attempt, and overall passer rating. He even ranks last in passing yards per game (164.0), an incredible collapse in a column in which he easily led the conference in 2021 and ’22. It was no secret coming in that the offense under first-year coordinator Kevin Barbay would be a significant departure from the Air Raid, but so far whatever the new identity is supposed to be has been lost in translation.
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(Last week: 5⬇)

14. AJ Swann, Vanderbilt

Swann turned in a feast-or-famine performance against UNLV, combining big plays with big mistakes in a wild, 40-37 loss that came down to the final seconds. The feast: 335 yards and 3 touchdowns on 17-of-35 passing, good for 19.7 yards per completion. The famine: All those incompletions, plus 3 giveaways — an interception and 2 lost fumbles, 1 of which was returned for a touchdown — that resulted in 17 points for UNLV. The Commodores badly needed a win in Vegas to sustain any hope of eking out bowl eligibility in conference play. Instead, the mission from here on out is to keep it respectable enough on the scoreboard to keep Clark Lea off the hot seat.
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(Last week: 14⬌)