No convention in school soccer touts as a lot expertise at quarterback because the SEC this season. The league’s top-end group of sign callers flexing Faculty Soccer Playoff intentions are off to stat-happy begins and needs to be spotlighted alternatives within the 2025 NFL Draft.
This week’s Related Press High 25 ballot options 5 SEC groups within the high six spots, 4 of that are led by draft-eligible quarterbacks. The SEC turned the primary convention within the trendy period to have 4 quarterbacks taken within the first three rounds of the 2023 NFL Draft after Bryce Younger, Anthony Richardson, Will Levis and Hendon Hooker obtained the decision.
Earlier this spring, Heisman winner and former LSU star Jayden Daniels went No. 2 total on the place and now, the SEC may have the highest choose within the 2025 cycle if Georgia’s Carson Beck or Quinn Ewers at Texas will get the nod.
With Beck and Ewers widely-perceived as the highest prospects at quarterback from the SEC, the league’s record-setting variety of sign callers taken two years in the past needs to be eclipsed with this star-studded 2025 group. Behind the captains for the Bulldogs and Longhorns, the league options rising stars Jaxson Dart (Ole Miss), Garrett Nussmeier (LSU), Jalen Milroe (Alabama) and Brady Cook dinner (Missouri). That is a half-dozen SEC sign callers who might be chosen throughout the first few rounds.
Three video games into the season, Dart leads the nation in passing yards (1,172) and completion charge (83%), Nussmeier ranks No. 2 in landing passes (10), and the SEC has 4 of the highest 6 main Heisman candidates — showcased by Dart and Milroe — in response to newest odds, through SportsLine.
Wanting additional, there’s additionally two quarterbacks ascending at a House X-level tempo who are usually not draft-eligible: Tennessee’s Nico Iamaleava and Texas redshirt freshman Arch Manning. The Vols are averaging a university football-best 63.7 factors per recreation throughout Iamaleava’s first season as a starter, whereas Manning accounted for 5 complete touchdowns within the first prolonged motion of his profession throughout Saturday’s win over UTSA after Ewers went to the sideline with an belly damage.
Solely thrice because the SEC’s preliminary enlargement to 12 groups in 1992 has the league produced three quarterbacks in a single season with 30 or extra landing passes, these feats occurring in 2007, 2012 and 2021. This fall, there’s an opportunity the league produces 5 sign callers who surpass the quantity.
There’s starpower like by no means earlier than throughout the convention and that is not hyperbole. The very fact many of the league’s torchbearers underneath heart have been in the identical system for a number of seasons means one thing. Beck sat behind Stetson Bennett earlier than changing into Georgia’s starter in 2023, whereas Nussmeier was the second-team possibility at LSU throughout Jayden Daniels’ run to a Heisman final season.
Each of these groups modified coordinators throughout the offseason, however schematically, the playbooks and philosophies are close to equivalent copies. At Ole Miss, Dart is Lane Kiffin’s right-hand man for the third consecutive yr and similar goes for Cook dinner at Missouri. Ewers held off Manning for the second straight offseason at Texas and Steve Sarkisian has full confidence in each gamers for the Longhorns who can run his offense to close perfection.
The one main change is Milroe at Alabama, who began the ultimate 10 video games of the 2023 season for the Crimson Tide underneath the course of Tommy Rees offensively. With Kalen DeBoer changing Nick Saban within the offseason, Milroe needed to regulate to a extra wide-open scheme and now, he is accounted for 14 complete touchdowns over three begins as a junior.
Approaching the top of faculty soccer’s opening month, quarterback play within the SEC as soon as once more is dominating the nationwide dialog forward of the primary expanded playoff and there is not any indicators of the manufacturing on the place slowing down.
