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..

1. Jayden Daniels, LSU

Daniels is on such a heater over the past month that it’s getting difficult to write about him without unfurling a scroll of statistical superlatives, opposite a bombed-out LSU defense that continues to demand them. Today, let’s zoom in on his success as a runner — the strength of his game last year, eclipsed this year by his suddenly prolific arm.

Among Power 5 quarterbacks, Daniels ranks 2nd in rushing yards (excluding sacks), 5th in yards per carry, 4th in missed tackles forced (per Pro Football Focus), and No. 1 in runs of 20+ yards. He just ripped off a career-high 147 yards (again, excluding sacks) in Saturday’s come-from-behind, 49-39 win at Missouri, a significant chunk of that coming after taking a shot to the ribs that briefly forced him out of the game, and which visibly affected him the rest of the day as he willed the Tigers back into a game they trailed at one point 22-7. He’s got the dawg in him, a little bit of the cat in the open field, and a substantial dose of the Toradol.

Furious midseason paces tend to descend from orbit in the long run, so take the following with a grain of salt. But for context, in terms of total offense, yards per play and pass efficiency, Daniels’ output through 6 games is only a small rounding error off Joe Burrow’s historic pace in 2019. (The fact that LSU has managed to lose twice in that span anyway should put its defensive failures in context, too.) If he sustains it, the Tigers remain contenders in the SEC in spite of everything, and Daniels is a serious contender for the Heisman. The question now is just how big that if turns out to be.
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(Last week: 1⬌)

2. Carson Beck, Georgia

Beck continues to render the “game manager” tag a little more obsolete by the week. He was nearly flawless Saturday in 51-17 win over Kentucky, finishing 28-for-35 for 389 yards and 4 touchdowns — all to different receivers. More to the point, he was explosive, connecting on 5-for-9 attempts of 20+ yards, without sacrificing anything in the way of efficiency — on everything short of 20 yards, he was 23-for-24. Georgia scored on 8 of its 9 possessions before Beck yielded to backup Brock Vandagriff in garbage time, the lone exception coming on an interception out of halftime that stood as the only blemish on an otherwise pristine performance.

That kind of outing against one of the conference’s stingier defenses checks a lot of boxes for a guy who began the season as the biggest unknown in Georgia’s bid for a 3-peat. The only remaining question mark, to reprise a theme from the Stetson Bennett years, is what happens when an opposing defense eventually succeeds in turning up the heat?

Kentucky barely laid a hand on Beck, generating a grand total of 2 QB pressures on 36 drop-backs, per PFF, and his pressure rate for the season (14.2%) is the lowest of any full-time starter nationally except Oregon’s Bo Nix. That can’t last forever. (Well, probably.) But in the meantime, any other defenses that were banking on stuffing the run and forcing the new guy to beat them with his arm should be on notice to be more careful about what they wish for.
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(Last week: 4⬆)

3. Jaxson Dart, Ole Miss

Last week, Dart was riding high off his best game as a Rebel in a 55-49 win over LSU. This week, he’s leveling off following a muted outing in a 27-20 slugfest against Arkansas: His 186 total yards vs. the Hogs marked his lowest output in an Ole Miss uniform. Still, on a “punting is winning” kinda night, Dart held up his end of the bargain simply by taking care of the ball — no picks, no fumbles.

Ole Miss finished +2 in turnover margin, turned the first of its 2 takeaways into a short-field touchdown, and survived to play another Saturday at 5-1.
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(Last week: 2⬇)

4. Brady Cook, Missouri

Cook cleared up any confusion that he was a mere flavor of the month in Week 6, torching LSU for 411 yards (a career high) and 2 touchdowns in a performance that, against any other quarterback in the conference, likely would have been good enough to lift Missouri to 6-0.

Still, in a shootout with minimal margin for error, he also made his costliest mistakes of the season.

The first, an ill-fated 2nd-quarter pass that was picked off by LSU’s Harold Perkins Jr., snapped Cook’s record-breaking streak without an interception, halted Mizzou’s early momentum and lit the initial spark of LSU’s rally from a 22-7 deficit.

Prior to Perkins’ pick, Cook could not miss and LSU had not come close to forcing a stop. But the 2nd INT, coming with Missouri down 42-39 and the clock ticking below a minute to play, is the one that’s really going to haunt him, along with everyone who had Mizzou covering as a 5.5-point underdog:

Thus ends Cook’s rapid ascent up the ladder, for at least one week. A couple of winnable dates against Kentucky and South Carolina represent an opportunity to restore the hype heading into a Nov. 4 trip to Georgia.
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(Last week: 3⬇)

5. Spencer Rattler, South Carolina

This weekend’s date with Florida is a must-win for the 2-3 Gamecocks, as well as a chance for Rattler to redeem his worst performance of 2022 in a 38-6 debacle in Gainesville. Although he was a respectable-looking 18-for-26 passing with no interceptions in that game, those attempts yielded just 145 yards (5.6 ypa), and he didn’t attempt a single pass of 20+ yards. As dismal as it was, though, it was also a turning point. In his 9 starts as a Gamecock prior to the Florida loss, Rattler had just 1 game over 300 yards passing, and 2 games with multiple touchdowns. He has topped 300 yards in 4 of the 8 games since, throwing multiple touchdowns in 5.
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(Last week: 5⬌)

6. Jalen Milroe, Alabama

Milroe’s boom-or-bust rep was on full display at Texas A&M, where he was sacked 6 times, threw a ghastly interception, and set career highs for passing yards (321) and touchdowns (3) in a crucial road win. As usual, what he lacks in consistency, he tends to make up for in big-play juice: Per PFF, Milroe was 6-for-8 on attempts of 20+ yards, accounting for nearly two-thirds of his total output.

Besides reaffirming Alabama as the undisputed favorite in the West, the big takeaway from the win in College Station was Milroe’s burgeoning connection with Jermaine Burton, whose 197-yard, 2-touchdown performance was easily the best by a Bama wideout in nearly 2 years. The Tide have been waiting for a new headliner to emerge at the position since Jameson Williams and John Metchie III went down with season-ending injuries in the 2021 postseason, to no avail. Burton, a touted transfer from Georgia, has always had the talent; if Saturday was the beginning of that potential finally coming to fruition, their odds of surviving the rest of the conference gauntlet with CFP ambitions intact just got a lot better.
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(Last week: 7⬆)

7. KJ Jefferson, Arkansas

Arkansas is built to be a run-first operation, and the gradual collapse of the ground game has weighed heavily on Jefferson’s declining efficiency. He’s already been sacked as many times this season (24) as he was in all of 2022, including 5 sacks in Saturday’s 27-20 loss at Ole Miss. But pressure doesn’t account for everything: Per PFF, 4 of Jefferson’s 5 interceptions over the past 3 games have come on plays where he was kept clean.
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(Last week: 6⬇)

8. Graham Mertz, Florida

Mertz’s season to date can be summed up in 2 equal and opposite statistics. On one hand, he ranks 2nd nationally in completion percentage (79.5%). (For context, the single-season SEC/FBS record is 77.4%, set by Alabama’s Mac Jones in 2020.) On the other, he ranks last in the Power 5 in average depth of target, aiming on average just 5.6 yards downfield. Whether by design or necessity, he’s the reigning king of the checkdown. More than 35% of Mertz’s passes have landed behind the line of scrimmage, per PFF, the highest rate in the country.
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(Last week: 10⬆)

9. Joe Milton III, Tennessee

All of the scouting reports on Milton coming into the season stressed his volatility, projecting him as a high-variance gunslinger prone to peaks and valleys. Instead, his season has been an odd combination of consistency and frustration: He’s put up roughly similar stat lines in every game, never quite falling below the Mendoza line but having yet to move the needle with an undeniably plus performance, either. No peaks, no valleys. This week’s visit from Texas A&M is a big one as the Vols ramp up for a critical October against the Aggies, Alabama and Kentucky.
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(Last week: 8⬇)

10. Devin Leary, Kentucky

Leary, a former ACC Offensive Player of the Year at NC State, portaled in over the winter specifically to give Kentucky a chance against the likes of Georgia, but in Saturday’s 51-13 beatdown in Athens, the Wildcats looked as far away from making their move as ever. On their only sustained scoring drive, Leary was a solid 5-for-8 for 43 yards and a touchdown. (A couple UGA penalties helped them along on that journey, including a 15-yarder for roughing the passer.) The rest of the night, he was a dismal 5-for-18 for 85 yards and didn’t take a snap on UGA’s side of the field except on the one possession that started there following a Kentucky takeaway. Zooming out, Leary’s first 3 games vs. SEC opponents have yielded the nation’s worst passer rating in conference play (104.0).
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(Last week: 9⬇)

11. Will Rogers, Mississippi State

Rogers is “day-to-day” with an injury to his non-throwing shoulder, per Zach Arnett, and likely not facing a prolonged absence as feared after he exited Saturday’s win over Western Michigan in the second half. An open date arrives at the perfect time to give Rogers an extra week of R&R ahead of 2 crucial road trips for bowl eligibility at Arkansas and Auburn.
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(Last week: 11⬌)

12. Max Johnson, Texas A&M

Johnson made some plays in the Aggies’ loss to Alabama, going 3-for-5 on attempts of 20+ yards and averaging 17.1 yards per completion. The enduring image of the day, though, was A&M’s offense collapsing under the strain of a relentless Bama pass rush in the second half. Altogether, Johnson faced pressure on 19 of his 34 drop-backs, per PFF, including 4 sacks.

Two of those snaps came at a pivotal moment in the 4th quarter, with A&M trailing 24-17 and in desperate need of some juice. The Aggies had just dodged a bullet when an apparent Alabama touchdown on a blocked field goal was negated by a penalty on the return; the Crimson Tide were subsequently forced to punt, preserving a 7-point margin. But the reprieve didn’t last long: On the ensuing possession, Johnson was swarmed over on back-to-back plays, the second of which ended with him getting flagged for intentional grounding in his own end zone to force a demoralizing, effectively game-clinching safety.

Despite the 6-point margin of defeat, those 2 points were arguably the difference: Now trailing by 2 scores, A&M wound up settling for a field goal from the 2-yard line on its next (ultimately final) possession — a dubious decision, anyway, but only a decision at all because Johnson’s protection up to that point could not hold.
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(Last week: 12⬌)

13. Payton Thorne, Auburn

Thorne has struggled mightily against Auburn’s 3 Power 5 opponents to date, completing 25-of-45 passes in those games for a meager 4.9 yards per attempt. This week, the easily resistible force meets the imminently movable object when Auburn visits Baton Rouge to take on LSU’s reeling secondary. If he can’t put together a competent outing against the Tigers, it might be time to ditch the passing game altogether and revert to last year’s late-season theme of Robby Ashford running some desperate variation on the Wildcat.
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(Last week: 13⬌)

14. Ken Seals or AJ Swann, Vanderbilt

The pendulum in Nashville has clearly swung in favor of the veteran, Seals, who has gone the distance 2 weeks in a row against Missouri and Florida with respectable results. I’m sticking with the “or” here for 2 reasons: 1), it’s unclear to what extent Swann’s demotion is connected to an elbow injury he suffered in Week 4 (although Swann was reportedly available on Saturday against the Gators); and 2), this is just about the point in every Vandy season where the pecking order devolves into a week-by-week proposition.

Other than Seals himself in the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign, the Commodores haven’t had a clear-cut QB1 after midseason since the legendary Kyle Shurmur in 2018. Seals is back on top for now, heading into a home date with Georgia; barring a revelatory turn against the Dawgs, I’d be very surprised if we’ve seen the last of Swann this year.
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(Last week: 14⬌)

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