Sizzling surge has SEC QBs ahead of pack in early Heisman Trophy race and NFL Draft projections

No conference in college football touts as much talent at quarterback as the SEC this season. The league’s top-end group of signal callers flexing College Football Playoff intentions are off to stat-happy starts and should be spotlighted selections in the 2025 NFL Draft.

This week’s Associated Press Top 25 poll features five SEC teams in the top six spots, four of which are led by draft-eligible quarterbacks. The SEC became the first conference in the modern era to have four quarterbacks taken in the first three rounds of the 2023 NFL Draft after Bryce Young, Anthony Richardson, Will Levis and Hendon Hooker got the call.

Earlier this spring, Heisman winner and former LSU star Jayden Daniels went No. 2 overall at the position and now, the SEC could have the top pick in the 2025 cycle if Georgia’s Carson Beck or Quinn Ewers at Texas gets the nod.

With Beck and Ewers widely-perceived as the top prospects at quarterback from the SEC, the league’s record-setting number of signal callers taken two years ago should be eclipsed with this star-studded 2025 group. Behind the captains for the Bulldogs and Longhorns, the league features rising stars Jaxson Dart (Ole Miss), Garrett Nussmeier (LSU), Jalen Milroe (Alabama) and Brady Cook (Missouri). That’s a half-dozen SEC signal callers who could be selected within the first few rounds.

Three games into the season, Dart leads the nation in passing yards (1,172) and completion rate (83%), Nussmeier ranks No. 2 in touchdown passes (10), and the SEC has four of the top 6 leading Heisman candidates — showcased by Dart and Milroe — according to latest odds, via SportsLine.

Looking further, there’s also two quarterbacks ascending at a Space X-level pace who are not draft-eligible: Tennessee’s Nico Iamaleava and Texas redshirt freshman Arch Manning. The Vols are averaging a college football-best 63.7 points per game during Iamaleava’s first season as a starter, while Manning accounted for five total touchdowns in the first extended action of his career during Saturday’s win over UTSA after Ewers went to the sideline with an abdominal injury.

Only three times since the SEC’s initial expansion to 12 teams in 1992 has the league produced three quarterbacks in a single season with 30 or more touchdown passes, those feats occurring in 2007, 2012 and 2021. This fall, there’s a chance the league produces five signal callers who surpass the number.

There’s starpower like never before within the conference and that’s not hyperbole. The fact most of the league’s torchbearers under center have been in the same system for multiple seasons means something. Beck sat behind Stetson Bennett before becoming Georgia’s starter in 2023, while Nussmeier was the second-team option at LSU during Jayden Daniels’ run to a Heisman last season. 

Both of those teams changed coordinators during the offseason, but schematically, the playbooks and philosophies are near identical copies. At Ole Miss, Dart is Lane Kiffin’s right-hand man for the third consecutive year and same goes for Cook at Missouri. Ewers held off Manning for the second straight offseason at Texas and Steve Sarkisian has full confidence in both players for the Longhorns who can run his offense to near perfection.

The only major change is Milroe at Alabama, who started the final 10 games of the 2023 season for the Crimson Tide under the direction of Tommy Rees offensively. With Kalen DeBoer replacing Nick Saban in the offseason, Milroe had to adjust to a more wide-open scheme and now, he’s accounted for 14 total touchdowns over three starts as a junior.

Approaching the end of college football’s opening month, quarterback play in the SEC once again is dominating the national conversation ahead of the first expanded playoff and there’s no signs of the production at the position slowing down.