There are college
quarterbacks we’ve already seen play, but not enough to know for
sure how they’ll impact the national title race. We answer key
questions about six of these players.
The 2025 college football season will present playoff contenders
we can’t foresee now.
It will also feature contenders with quarterbacks we have a
pretty good idea about already. Carson Beck, if he’s healthy, is a
known quantity for the Miami Hurricanes. We have a pretty good
handle on who Cade Klubnik is by now, though maybe Clemson
offensive coordinator Garrett Riley can conjure a bit more from him
in their third year together.
The College Football Playoff race also has its known QB
unknowns. It’s not worth doing the guesswork right now, in May, on
who will play quarterback for Georgia, how quickly Julian Sayin
will play well at
national champion Ohio State, or Bryce Underwood at Michigan,
or CJ Carr at Notre Dame.
I wouldn’t even guess who will start the most games for Georgia,
and as excited as I am to see baseball-playing quarterback Austin
Simmons get some burn at Ole Miss, he’s thrown 32 college passes.
(I’ll admit I’m really interested in the sophomore, who
led a brilliant drive against Georgia last year and whom I hear
good things about from Ole Miss people.)
There are a handful of quarterbacks in a different bucket,
though. These are the players we’ve already seen a lot of, but not
enough to know for sure how they’ll affect the title race.
Here are six questions about six of these quarterbacks:
Penn State: Does Drew Allar
Have Another Gear?
Probably not, but I think all of these things are
true:
- Allar will be an early NFL pick next year no matter what he
does in his final college season. - His underwhelming performance in darn near every big game of
his career has had at least something to do with Penn State’s
consistently horrible wide receiver unit. - His stats could get worse with Mackey Award-winning tight end
Tyler Warren now playing on Sundays. - His stats could also get better if Penn State can even
find one wideout with a pulse this year. There are enough
transfers in the building that one should hit,
right? - Allar has simply not been that good, and at this point, as
a college quarterback, he is who he is. - Given all of the above, Penn State could win the national
title.
We understand Allar’s deal after two years as Penn State’s
starter. He will keep the ball away from the other team (2.9%
pickable pass rate last year, 1.6% in 2023), post decently
above-average numbers across the board, and struggle when he meets
elite defenses in big games.
The latter is the most subject to change of those realities,
though. Allar threw an utterly miserable interception to Notre Dame
in the waning seconds of the Orange Bowl semifinal last year, but I
wouldn’t bank on him doing that again. Allar wasn’t great in a home
loss to Ohio State, either, but he also hit a receiver in the hands
in the end zone and saw the ball bounce off those hands and into
the grasp of a cornerback for a touchback.
The margins are small – that’s all I’m saying. It’s nice to
imagine Allar will have a proper breakout. I doubt that he will,
but don’t fall into the trap of saying, “Penn State can’t win a
title with this guy.” They were a play or two away from beating
last year’s national champ and a play or two away from getting a
rematch with the same Buckeyes team in the title game. (Also, an
11.5% sack per pressure rate is sleek.)
Texas: Will Arch Manning’s Job
Always Be That Easy?
I’m not exactly being fair to Manning. He drew some tough
assignments last year, including entering a game against Georgia
down 20-0, cold off the bench. (That didn’t go well.) But in some
important ways, Manning had an easy life as a change-of-pace option
and backup to Quinn Ewers.
Manning’s open target rate was 87.8%, second-highest in the SEC,
as skilled wideouts like Matthew Golden and DeAndre Moore Jr. shook
off defensive backs in Steve Sarkisian’s system. The offensive
line, with several future NFL players on it, helped Texas surrender
a 30.9% pressure rate, the third best in the conference.
adjusted attempts; no throwaways or
spikes)
Will all of that hold this year? Who knows. Texas recruits at an
elite level, but there’s a lot of backfilling to do as Manning
slides into the starter’s role.
Left tackle Kelvin Banks and receiver Golden were first-round
picks. Quality tight end Gunnar Helm, who developed a lot in
Austin, was a fourth-round pick. Guard Hayden Conner went in the
sixth. Betting on Texas to fill those holes is fair, but Manning’s
growth in his first full-time starting assignment will make
everything run much more smoothly.
Oregon: Will Dante Moore
Remain Upright This Time?
Moore rode the pine behind Dillon Gabriel last season, learning
Will Stein’s offense and throwing all of eight passes in mop-up
duty. Stein is building a nice little track record of resurrecting
transfer quarterbacks who had either gotten pretty stale (Bo Nix)
or failed to unlock another level (Gabriel) and were then able to
do it with the Ducks.
He’s banking on Moore, in his third year as a college player,
being next.
All we know about Moore, really, is what we saw when he played
in nine games as a true freshman for UCLA two years ago. Moore was
brutal that year, throwing interceptions on 4.2% of his passes
(with a nearly identical 4.0% pickable pass rate) and taking 25
sacks in nine games. (UCLA on the whole gave up 42, placing 119th
in the FBS.)
Moore was under constant duress and played like it, posting a
69.9%
well-thrown rate that left him in the bottom handful of Pac-12
quarterbacks.
This is a restart, but issue No. 1 is staying on his feet. Issue
No. 2 is not throwing the ball to the other team. It should be
easier to accomplish these things in Eugene than it was in
Pasadena.
Alabama: Is Ty Simpson a
Completely Different Guy?
Simpson doesn’t fit perfectly into this collection of
quarterback questions because we’ve only seen him sparingly. But
he’s appeared in games in three different seasons for Alabama, and
I’m intrigued that he’s not only still in Tuscaloosa but looking
like the Crimson Tide starter at the moment.
Simpson’s statistical profile is not much worth digging into,
other than to point out that it barely exists. He’s appeared in six
games as Alabama’s backup QB in each of the past two seasons,
throwing 45 passes over that time. His highest-leverage work was a
relief appearance at USF in Week 2 of the 2023 season, when Bama’s
offense was stuck in the mud and it looked like Nick Saban had his
worst team since 2007.
Simpson only threw nine passes that day, but Alabama reeled off
17 unanswered points, won the game, and eventually made the playoff
after settling on a vastly improved Jalen Milroe behind
center.
I don’t think Saban thought that highly of Simpson or he would
have gotten a longer look when Alabama was sputtering in the
legend’s last season. But, Simpson was a five-star
prospect once upon a time, and his numbers are so nondescript in
limited action (neither great nor bad) that there’s not much to do
but wait and see how this shakes out.
If the season started now, Simpson would be
the man.
Boise State: What is Maddux
Madsen Without Ashton Jeanty?
Madsen was a passenger on Boise State’s journey to the No. 3
seed in the CFP last year. Jeanty was
the focal point of Boise’s offense and had a measurable effect
on the opposition’s defensive strategy: Boise faced a 49.9% bad box
percentage, third-highest in the Group of Five. (On half of the
Broncos’ snaps, the defense packed more defenders into the box than
Boise had blockers.)
This meant lighter coverage looks for Madsen, and he didn’t do a
lot with them. His 77.1% well-thrown rate was just about dead
average in the Mountain West, and his 4.69% pickable pass rate was
worse than that.
Madsen still managed solid overall numbers. His 8.1 adjusted
yards per attempt were second-best in the MWC behind UNLV’s
Hajj-Malik Williams, and his 1.5% actual interception rate
was No. 1 among the MWC’s regular starters. But the wide gap
between that figure and his pickable pass rate tells us that Madsen
was fortunate not to have bigger problems.
To keep the Broncos chugging, he’ll have to play better – and
not just without Jeanty, but also while replacing No. 1 receiver
Cam Camper.
Tennessee: Is Joey Aguilar
Another Plug-and-Play?
Tennessee wound up trading quarterbacks with UCLA after Nico
Iamaleava headed west. Iamaleava won’t factor into the playoff race
at UCLA, but Aguilar could.
The upside here is huge, because the upside is huge for any
live-armed quarterback in Josh Heupel’s “run to open grass and wait
for the QB to throw the ball really far” offense. But it doesn’t
always work, and for every Hendon Hooker (or even Joe Milton)
success story, there’s an Iamaleava, who played fine at Tennessee
but left a lot of meat on the bone.
Next up is Aguilar, who was a UCLA QB for just a few minutes
after transferring from Appalachian State. Aguilar’s two years
starting for App were a mixed bag.
He threw the most interceptions in the FBS last year (14) but
may have been a bit unlucky, as his 3.3% pickable pass rate led to
a 3.6% real interception rate. (That means Aguilar threw at least
one or two picks that our trackers don’t put on him.) Aguilar still
had interception problems in 2023, but not as severe, and had
pretty efficiency numbers.
App’s offense under now-fired coach Shawn Clark will never be
confused for the Heupel scheme at Tennessee, but Aguilar did have
to show some downfield passing chops in Boone. He averaged 10.6 air
yards last year (fourth in the Sun Belt) and had an above-average
79.2% well-thrown rate.
He may well be the kind of guy who goes supernova playing for
Heupel. You can see the vision!
But let’s wait and see.
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