I came into this year raving about the potential for SEC quarterbacks to finally rise above expectations.

With first-round prospects Drew Lock and Jarrett Stidham back, as well as promising Jake Fromm and Tua Tagovailoa, this had the potential to be a breakthrough year for a conference that’s widely had subpar quarterback play in recent memory.

I hate to generalize because while Tagovailoa obviously isn’t part of this conversation, SEC quarterbacks have not had the year I envisioned.

This stat from my buddy Brad Crawford shows exactly why that’s the case:

That’s the key there — vs. league competition (make sure you scroll to the bottom of that tweet to see the “failing” grades). Anybody can go off against FCS competition. But struggling against SEC defenses doesn’t exactly show that a player is dominant.

And no, touchdown-to-interception ratio isn’t everything. There are ways to pad that stat, and there are also things it doesn’t take into account, like efficiency and rushing ability. Still, that’s not a sign that the SEC is loaded with elite quarterbacks.

Remember all of these things when you question my Week 9 SEC Quarterback Rankings:

14. Terry Wilson, Kentucky

Imagine completing 3 passes for fewer than 20 yards and winning a game and not being a triple-option team. There’s Kentucky for you. Wilson was a threat with his legs again, but he and the Kentucky passing game was non-existent against Vanderbilt. In his past 4 games, Wilson is averaging just 82 passing yards. Yeesh. Against Georgia, you can’t be one-dimensional and expect to move the ball consistently.

13. Jake Bentley, South Carolina

An off week for Bentley didn’t change my belief that he’s a bad half from getting benched for Michael Scarnecchia. He cannot continue to make those costly mistakes — 7 interceptions in 4 SEC starts — and expect to keep this job. There won’t be any excuses for him to struggle in a home game against Tennessee.

12. Ty Storey, Arkansas

No, he didn’t play. Connor Noland got his first career start in place of the injured Storey, who was obviously shook up from the hit he took late against Ole Miss. This would have been a nice defense to pad the stats for someone who looked like he was making significant strides recently. Storey has a rather difficult finish to the season in terms of defenses he’ll see, but I’ll be curious how much better he looks in the next month.

11. Nick Fitzgerald, Mississippi State

Yuck. I know that Fitzgerald is the most prolific rushing quarterback in SEC history, but man, the passing has regressed significantly. It just looks like the game is too fast for him, which is strange for a senior quarterback and a 3-year starter. But you get the sense that he’s just not figuring out Joe Moorhead’s system. Even though he was facing arguably the best secondary in the country on the road, Saturday night’s debacle certainly made the calls for Keytaon Thompson even louder.

I mean …

10. Kyle Shurmur, Vanderbilt

Not having Ke’Shawn Vaughn hurt Vandy’s attempts to have a truly balanced offense, but Shurmur is leading an offense that’s averaging 15 points per game in SEC play. The good news is that he threw just 1 interception in 3 games against elite defenses in Georgia, Florida and Kentucky. The bad news is that without that game-changing ability, the Commodores’ offense has a lot of pressure to sustain drives. Let’s see if Shurmur can take advantage of a favorable end of the season and hit the 3,000-yard mark.

9. Jarrett Guarantano, Tennessee

I’m not going to fault Guarantano too much for getting crushed and knocked out of the game against Alabama. I praise the kid’s toughness week after week. He has bruised ribs, so we’ll wait on his status moving forward. The good news for Tennessee was that Keller Chryst looked like he knew what he was doing. The bad news for Guarantano was that he looked like someone who was really figuring it out. Here’s hoping we see more of that in 2018.

8. Jarrett Stidham, Auburn

A bounce-back game for Stidham against that horrendous Ole Miss defense was a welcome sight. He didn’t look great early and the running game did a lot of the heavy lifting, but he made some nice throws in this one (the long pass to Seth Williams should have been 6). Perhaps the best positive was that Stidham only took 1 sack and he didn’t turn the ball over. He’s still down from last year in terms of completion percentage and yards per attempt. Auburn’s daunting final month will be telling for Stidham’s declining draft stock.

7. Feleipe Franks, Florida

People chirp at me about not giving Franks enough love for his 15-5 touchdown-interception ratio. There. Happy now? Even at 57 percent, Franks’ accuracy has been better than I thought it’d be in Year 1 with Dan Mullen. I would have bet good money that he’d have more than 5 interceptions heading into the Georgia game. He has been better in the short passing game than I thought he’d be, which is part of the reason Florida is ranked in the top 10 in late October.

6. Jordan Ta’amu, Ole Miss

Ole Miss could’ve used D.K. Metcalf on Saturday. It’s a bummer that he’s out for the year. The Rebels are still loaded at receiver, though, so it’s hard to feel too bad for Ta’amu when he only puts up 16 points. Against the likes of Alabama, Auburn and LSU, the high-powered Rebels’ offense averaged 13 points. That’s it. That’s not just a product of having a horrific defense. I like Ta’amu, and I think his legs have given him a completely new dimension the last month. But as I always say, it’s hard to get too high on him when the offense goes into a shell against elite competition.

5. Kellen Mond, Texas A&M

A bye week for Mond meant he couldn’t build on his solid start to 2018. He’ll look to continue A&M’s quiet 3-game winning streak against a loaded Mississippi State defense. Mond and Ta’amu are the only SEC quarterbacks with 1,800 passing yards and 200 rushing yards. Mond would have even better rushing numbers if he weren’t leading Power 5 quarterbacks in sacks taken (22). Still, Mond’s mobility coupled with his 8.4 yards per attempt and 62 percent accuracy isn’t bad at all.

4. Joe Burrow, LSU

I know, I know, I know. You want to talk numbers with Burrow? They aren’t very good. Just so we can get this out of the way, here you go:

  • Completion percentage — 53.8 (112th in FBS)
  • QB rating — 118.2 (102nd in FBS)
  • TD passes — 6 (102nd in FBS)
  • Yards per attempt — 6.9 (84th in FBS)
  • Passing yards — 1,544 (53rd in FBS)

I get it. Those numbers are not good. So why do I consistently put him among the SEC’s best? Well, I’d argue that beating 4 of 5 ranked teams is darn impressive. By the way, here are the rankings of those pass defenses in FBS:

  • Miami — No. 2
  • Florida — No. 4
  • Mississippi State — No. 10
  • Georgia — No. 14
  • Auburn — No. 60

Don’t tell me “yeah, their numbers are really good because they faced Burrow.” He actually threw for more yards than their averages against Auburn, Georgia, Florida and Miami. Burrow didn’t light up the nation’s top scoring defense against MSU, but nobody has. The strength of schedule is something that has to be brought up because Burrow still does so many other things (rushing, not throwing interceptions, coming up big late, etc.) and he still finds ways to win. OK, rant over.

3. Drew Lock, Mizzou

Without Emanuel Hall, Lock had a bounce-back game against a woeful Memphis defense. Give him credit for lighting up a defense that he should light up every day of the week and twice on Saturday. We’re still talking about a player with 1 touchdown in SEC play this year, and he’ll face a couple of SEC’s top pass defenses the next 2 weeks. Lock’s yards per attempt is down from 9.5 to 7.9 in Derek Dooley’s offense sans a healthy Hall for much of the year. Let’s see if that number can climb back up if the deep target returns this week.

2. Jake Fromm, Georgia

Coming off a game in which many debated if Fromm should have been benched, here’s something to consider. He’s ranked No. 5 in FBS in quarterback ranking. Here’s the list of guys ranked ahead of him:

  • Tua Tagovailoa, Alabama
  • Kyler Murray, West Virginia
  • Will Grier, West Virginia
  • Dwayne Haskins, Ohio State

That’s it. Coming off his worst game of his career, I’m looking forward to seeing how Fromm handles Todd Grantham’s pressure. He’s going to see loads of it this weekend. Will the calls for Justin Fields multiply? Or will this be a game when Fromm reminds the world he’s one of the nation’s top quarterbacks?

1. Tua Tagovailoa, Alabama

It’s way past the point of this being insane. Tagovailoa will enter November having not attempted a fourth-quarter pass nor having thrown a single interception. A 25-0 touchdown-interception ratio and 13.6 yards per attempt is ridiculous, but you knew this.

On the surface, Tagovailoa is averaging a solid but not earth-shattering 258 passing yards per game. Well, just eliminate the fourth quarter of those games because we know he hasn’t thrown a pass in one. That’s essentially 6 games. He’d have an average of 344 passing yards per contest, and if he kept that pace up in a 15-game season, that’d be 5,165 yards. Only 5 people in college football history have hit that mark — and none played in the SEC. Sorry, that’s a lot of math. Here’s something that isn’t — Tagovailoa is doing things we’ve never seen at Alabama, and I couldn’t be more excited to see him play on the road against the best secondary in America in 2 weeks.