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.

1. Jayden Daniels, LSU

Another week, another gonzo outing for Daniels, whose 325-yard, 3-touchdown line in a blowout win over Auburn was just one more rung on the ladder to New York. His résumé at midseason:

  • 5 consecutive games with 350+ yards of total offense
  • 6 consecutive games accounting for at least four touchdowns
  • 3 consecutive games with 95+ yards rushing (excluding sacks)
  • 6 consecutive games with a passer rating over 195.0
  • 6 consecutive games with a Total QBR rating over 88.0
  • 6 consecutive games with an EPA over 7.0

For the season, Daniels ranks No. 1 nationally in total offense, pass efficiency and EPA; No. 2 in touchdowns; No. 3 in overall PFF grading; and 4th in Total QBR. Of course, because his team has already lost twice, the vagaries of Heisman politics dictate that voters must see him do it against Alabama in 2 weeks before he can ascend into the top tier of candidates for the home stretch. In the meantime, he’ll have to settle for the honorary title of hottest quarterback in America.
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(Last week: 1⬌)

2. Carson Beck, Georgia

Brock Bowers’ ankle injury is a serious blow to Georgia’s bid for a 3-peat, especially if his recovery extends into the postseason. For all the talent on hand, Bowers is the one guy — probably the only one, including Beck — whose absence transcends “next man up” platitudes. No one else boasts his versatility as a blocker and receiver, or poses anywhere near the same problem to opposing defenses as a 1-on-1 mismatch.

Instead, replacing his production will be more of a collective effort, one for which the Dawgs are well-equipped. Bowers’ running mate at tight end, sophomore Oscar Delp, is presumably in for a bigger role in the passing game. But there’s plenty of room for the actual wideouts to pitch in, too: Whereas Delp has been largely relegated to a traditional inline role, Bowers has roamed all over the field, often lining up wide or in the slot. Those snaps are just as likely now to be manned by a committee of UGA’s gifted but essentially interchangeable receivers. If it takes three or four different guys to absorb his touches, between Delp, Marcus Rosemy-Jacksaint, Dominic Lovett, Ladd McConkey, RaRa Thomas, Dillon Bell and Arian Smith, well, Georgia’s got those guys.

The real question: Are any of them a gotta-have-it guy?

When the walls started closing in late in the Bulldogs’ Week 5 trip to Auburn, there was no doubt where Beck was going with the ball: On 3 late scoring drives in that game, he connected with Bowers 5 times for 119 yards, including the game-winning touchdown. (And not including a ridiculous one-handed catch that was wiped out by a penalty.) Depth is a nice luxury to fall back on; a proven star who the quarterback knows he can trust with the game on the line is a lot harder to come by.
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(Last week: 2⬌)

3. Jaxson Dart, Ole Miss

Dart was slightly less reliant on play-action over the first half of the season than he was in 2022, but only slightly. He still throws off play-action more frequently than any other SEC quarterback (50.8% of the time, per PFF, down from 57.6% last year), and averages 6.0 yards more per attempt when he does compared to straight drop-backs. The Rebels’ wild, 55-49 win over LSU was a testament to what the offense is capable of when it establishes the run; their 24-10 flop against Alabama was a testament to what they’re capable of when they don’t.
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(Last week: 3⬌)

4. Spencer Rattler, South Carolina

The Gamecocks are officially struggling at 2-4, but you won’t find a bigger gap in the country right now between a team’s record and its quarterback’s. “In a losing effort” stat lines don’t get much better than Rattler’s 313-yard, 4-touchdown performance against Florida, which yielded stellar ratings in terms of both efficiency (201.6) and QBR (92.8) as well as the highest EPA (12.1) of any FBS quarterback in Week 7 — all for naught in a deflating, 41-39 defeat.

It’s shaping up as that kind of year. Altogether, Rattler has accounted for a little more than 75% of South Carolina’s total offense for the season, the highest individual share in the conference, opposite a defense allowing 477.2 yards and 33.4 points per game against FBS opponents.
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(Last week: 5⬆)

5. Brady Cook, Missouri

On the opposite end of the spectrum, there’s Cook, who turned in his most pedestrian line of the season in Week 7 at Kentucky: 19-for-29 for 175 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT, and a season-low 120.7 passer rating. The result? A reassuring, 38-17 road win over a ranked opponent — all the more reassuring for the fact that the Tigers didn’t need a heroic performance from their quarterback to pull it off. Mizzou’s first touchdown against the Wildcats came courtesy of a fake punt, and 13 of their 21 points in the second half were the result of short-field drives that started inside the UK 35-yard line.
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(Last week: 4⬇)

6. Jalen Milroe, Alabama

It’s early still, but we’ve seen enough at this point to map out the typical Milroe performance: A handful of explosive plays, a couple groaners, far too many sacks (not his fault), and extended stretches of nothing much in particular. In Saturday’s 24-21 win over Arkansas, half of his 10 completions went for 25+ yards, including touchdowns covering 79 and 29 yards, respectively; altogether, he averaged an outstanding 11.3 yards per attempt despite finishing 10-for-21 overall and presiding over a streak of 8 straight incompletions in the second half. As long as a) he’s not committing multiple turnovers, and b) the defense is holding up its end of the bargain, that might just be good enough to punch the Tide’s ticket to Atlanta yet.
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(Last week: 6⬌)

7. Graham Mertz, Florida

Billy Napier is determined to resurrect Florida as a run-first, ball-control team, but in their come-from-behind, 41-39 win at South Carolina the Gators matched their highest-scoring outing in Napier’s tenure by airing it out. Mertz stole the show, throwing 48 times for 423 yards and 3 touchdowns, the last 2 capping a pair of 75-yard scoring drives in the 4th quarter to complete a comeback from a 37-27 deficit. South Carolina’s defense is South Carolina’s defense, but if Mertz is capable of winning shootouts with little semblance of run support, the offense’s ceiling might be significantly higher over the second half of the season than it appeared over the first.
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(Last week: 8⬆)

8. KJ Jefferson, Arkansas

Jefferson is enduring as disappointing a season as any quarterback in the country, but no matter how bad it gets, it’s nice to be reminded that he’s still capable of producing jaw-dropping entries in the annals of being extremely large.

No less an authority than Nick Saban himself called that “one of the most impressive plays I’ve ever seen a player make,” likening Jefferson’s imperviousness to DB Terrion Arnold’s attempt at a sack to “a gnat on a cow’s ass.” That quote might stand as the highlight of Arkansas’ rapidly unraveling season. But it also serves as a reminder of just how much heat Jefferson has been under: Difficult as he is to drag down, he’s already been sacked 25 times over the course the Razorbacks’ 5-game losing streak, more than in 2021 (21) or ’22 (23) over the course of a full season.
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(Last week: 7⬇)

9. Joe Milton III, Tennessee

Six games in, Tennessee is more or less exactly where it expected to be: 5-1, ranked in the top 20, all its larger goals still intact reach heading into a season-defining trip to Alabama. But it’s turning out to be a very different team than the up-tempo, high-octane outfits that lit up the scoreboard in Josh Heupel’s first 2 seasons, relying much more heavily on the defense and ground game in its 3 wins to date over Power 5 opponents.

And Milton, in particular, has not played nearly as big a factor as anticipated in his first (and last) turn as the Vols’ undisputed QB1.

Where are the big plays? Prior to the season, Milton was usually cast as a volatile, boom-or-bust type who offset his inconsistency with a surplus of downfield juice. The “inconsistent” part has borne out — he ranks in the bottom half of the conference in completion percentage, yards per attempt and overall efficiency, and just posted by far his worst stat line of the season in a 20-13 slugfest against Texas A&M.

The explosive part has not. Milton ranks 16th in the SEC in completions that gained 20+ yards, dead last among quarterbacks who have started multiple games. (That includes every QB ranked below him on this list, plus Texas A&M’s Conner Weigman, who hasn’t played since Week 4.) On attempts of 20+ yards downfield, Milton is a dismal 8-for-35 with more interceptions (4) than touchdowns (3), making him the league’s lowest-graded downfield passer per PFF by a wide margin.

Some of that we can chalk up to a small sample size, and the absence of a go-to wideout certainly has not helped. The Vols lost both of last year’s star receivers, Jalin Hyatt and Cedric Tillman, as well as the top holdover, Bru McCoy, who suffered a broken ankle in the win over South Carolina. The next reliable deep threat has yet to emerge. Drops are on ongoing issue, too. Outside of their lone defeat at Florida, there hasn’t been much urgency to press the issue in games Tennessee has mostly had well in hand, either. Still, given his enormous potential and the expectations that preceded him in a (formerly) vertically-oriented offense, settling for “game manager” mode is not what anyone had in mind for Milton as a sixth-year senior. Even if it was, he hasn’t been nearly efficient enough to continue pulling it off in a game when the offense needs to score with any kind of consistency.

The good news in the short term is that, in contrast to last year’s instant-classic shootout in Knoxville, the Third Saturday in October isn’t necessarily going to be that game. In its own way, Alabama has been just as chaotic offensively as Tennessee, and just as reliant on its defense to limit opposing offenses to the 20-point range or below. This version of the Crimson Tide is likely to be perfectly content mucking it up in a field-position battle, as is Kentucky in Week 9. Sooner or later, though, whether it’s this weekend or in November dates with Missouri and Georgia, to run the table the Vols are going to need Milton to actually be the rocket-armed bomber they were counting on. And let’s be real, the sooner the better.
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(Last week: 9⬌)

10. Will Rogers, Mississippi State

On Monday, coach Zach Arnett juked the question of Rogers’ status for this weekend’s trip to Arkansas, telling reporters at his weekly press conference “every single guy on our roster is on a day-to-day evaluation.” Aren’t we all? The severity of the shoulder injury that knocked Rogers out of the Bulldogs’ last game, a Week 6 win over Western Michigan, remains officially TBD coming off an open date. If he’s ruled out against the Hogs, Vanderbilt transfer Mike Wright is due up for his first start as a Bulldog in a must-win game for Mississippi State’s chances of eking out bowl eligibility. Wright, like Rogers, is a senior; otherwise, that’s where the similarities in their respective scouting reports end.
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(Last week: 11⬆)

11. Devin Leary, Kentucky

Kentucky had high expectations for Leary, a former ACC Offensive Player of the Year at NC State who received a hero’s welcome in the spring. Halfway through the conference slate, reality is beginning to sink in: If the defense and/or running game waver, the passing game is not picking up the slack. In 4 SEC games, Leary has completed a league-worst 47.5% of his attempts for 5.2 yards a pop. Meanwhile, the starting WR rotation of Tayvion Robinson, Dane Key and Barion Brown, projected as a strength, has been nondescript, at best. In Saturday’s 38-17 loss to Missouri, a promising start unraveled over the final 3 quarters, culminating in back-to-back interceptions in the 4th.

There’s still time for a 5-2 outfit to salvage a respectable finish, but it doesn’t get any easier from here, with Tennessee and Alabama waiting on the other side of an open date. Taking 3 of the last 5 would probably be enough to satisfy a fan base getting a little bored with third-tier bowl games, especially if one of them is at the expense of Louisville in the season finale. Otherwise, Leary’s lone tour in Lexington is in danger of going down as a bust.
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(Last week: 10⬇)

12. Max Johnson, Texas A&M

How to judge a quarterback who spends so much of his time horizontal? Johnson has been under relentless duress the past 2 weeks, facing pressure on 45 of his 73 drop-backs (an astounding 61.6%) per PFF in a couple of close-but-not-that-close losses to Alabama and Tennessee. While he’s taken his licks, he’s also thrown his picks — 4 in 3 starts since taking over for the injured Conner Weigman.

Johnson is not the big problem on an offense that can’t run against plus defenses and can’t protect when it comes time to pass its way out of a deficit. If he was playing for his hometown school, Georgia, I can imagine him residing comfortably near the top of this list. But he’s not the kind of talent who’s likely to ever transcend those problems, either. Under the circumstances he’s actually been dealt, he’s a sitting duck.
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(Last week: 12⬌)

13. Payton Thorne, Auburn

Auburn fans are already resigned to running out the clock on Thorne’s doomed tenure as QB1, which is set to expire the exact second the transfer portal opens for business in December. Thorne may be unlikely to be flat-out benched over the next 6 weeks, but certainly isn’t in any danger of turning the corner. In 3 SEC games, he’s averaging 4.2 yards per attempt with zero touchdowns and an abysmal 83.6 passer rating — significantly worse, for the record, than Robby Ashford‘s 107.0 rating in conference play last year.
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(Last week: 13⬌)

14. Ken Seals or AJ Swann, Vanderbilt

An open date is an opportunity for the ‘Dores to take a breath and evaluate their priorities at the position. Seals, who has taken every snap the past 3 weeks, has a higher floor but a lower ceiling; while less turnover-prone, he’s never led a win over an SEC opponent. Swann, who has been limited by an elbow injury, is more volatile at this stage of his career but brings a little more to the field athletically. If the question comes down to mitigating the damage over the last 4 games, Seals might be more likely to keep the margins respectable. But with bowl eligibility effectively off the table, giving Swann a head start on reclaiming the job in 2024 is still a very plausible option, whatever the short-term costs.
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(Last week: 14⬌)

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