Virginia football players with expiring eligibility will be granted an extra year by the NCAA in the wake of a shooting that killed Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry last month.
Virginia confirmed to ESPN that it initiated and submitted the request to the NCAA.
The decision affects only a handful of players who were in their final season of eligibility in 2022. One of those players — receiver Billy Kemp IV — has already declared for the NFL draft. Anthony Johnson, a first-team All-ACC cornerback, just completed his sixth season and accepted an invitation to the Senior Bowl.
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Virginia canceled its final two games after the shooting, which also left running back Mike Hollins and student Marlee Morgan injured.
Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., a UVA student and former member of the football team who was on the trip, has been charged with three counts of second-degree murder and the use of a firearm in the commission of a felony.
Prosecutors have also charged him with two counts of malicious wounding and additional gun-related charges related to shooting Hollins and Morgan. He is being held without bail in a Charlottesville jail. There is a case status hearing scheduled for Thursday.
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Ranking all 134 FBS QB situations into tiers ahead of the 2024 season
David Hale, ESPN Staff Writer
Jun 4, 2024, 07:00 AM ET
This is a strange year for quarterbacks in college football.
In 2023, Caleb Williams and Drake Maye headlined our annual tiered rankings, which came as no surprise. One had a Heisman Trophy. The other projected as a top-five NFL draft pick. They were established stars with real cachet, even among casual college football fans.
Before Williams and Maye there was Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud; before them Stetson Bennett; before them Justin Fields and Trevor Lawrence; before them Tua Tagovailoa and Lamar Jackson and Baker Mayfield and Deshaun Watson and Marcus Mariota and Jameis Winston and Johnny Manziel.
Since 2012, there has been only one other season that didn’t open with at least two quarterbacks who finished in the top 10 in Heisman balloting or won a national championship the previous season — and that was the COVID year of 2020 (which was followed by a season of big-time recruits with serious name recognition such as Young and DJ Uiagalelei taking over as starting quarterbacks and, because of new NIL rules, doing national ad campaigns). In 2013, 2014, 2017, 2022 and 2023, the defending Heisman winner returned. In 2014, 2015, 2018, 2019 and 2022, the quarterback of the defending champ returned.
In 2024, we have Jalen Milroe. That’s it. He’s the only quarterback to finish in the top 10 in Heisman voting (sixth) and return for 2024, the most accomplished of a QB class the year after six quarterbacks were selected among the first 12 picks of the NFL draft.
That’s not to say there aren’t some big names. Quinn Ewers graces the cover of the new EA Sports College Football 25 game, but perhaps ironically, he garnered more attention during his recruitment and early struggles than when he finally moved into the upper echelon of quarterbacks last season. Shedeur Sanders is a genuine star, but in a unique twist, he may be more famous among people with only a casual appreciation of college football. He is as much a brand as he is a talent (though he has got plenty of both). Carson Beck is widely projected to be the top NFL prospect in this group, and yet, ask the average fan of a team not named Georgia what they most remember about Beck and odds are it’ll be the photo of him buying a Lamborghini with his NIL money.
Going through our rankings, you’ll find some genuine talent and a ton of potential. And yet, as the kids say, the vibes are all wrong. There’s steak, but is there sizzle?
Go back in time to 2012 when we last faced something akin to this quandary. From the ashes emerged Manziel, arguably the most famous — or infamous — quarterback of the social media era of college football.
This is our Tier 1 for now, but where a fame vacuum exists in college football, it stands to reason someone — perhaps someone entirely unexpected — will step up to fill it. Nonetheless, let’s break down all 134 FBS programs’ QB situations by tiers.
Jump to:
Best of the best | Transfer market
Where is the ’22 QB class? | Looking for a reboot
Not too shabby
TIER 1: Cream of a questionable crop (nine players)
Texas’ Quinn Ewers totaled 27 touchdowns season last year and looks to do even more this fall. Matthew Visinsky/Icon Sportswire
Alabama’s Jalen Milroe, Ty Simpson
Georgia’s Carson Beck, Jaden Rashada, Gunner Stockton
Oregon’s Dillon Gabriel, Dante Moore
Texas’s Quinn Ewers, Arch Manning
You’re probably not alone if you’re looking at this group and asking yourself a simple question: Really? These guys?
Beck might be next year’s No. 1 overall pick, but he certainly wasn’t the biggest talent on his own offense last year. Milroe was benched at one point. After Week 3, Ewers had just three games with multiple touchdown passes. Gabriel has been prolific for years, but has he ever really been great?
Look around the country and you’ll find your share of other quality quarterbacks, but none quite so accomplished as this tier. Ewers and Milroe have started playoff games, something only one other quarterback in the country can say (Cade McNamara, believe it or not). Gabriel has thrown for nearly 15,000 career yards — 2,550 more than any other returning quarterback. Beck threw for nearly 4,000 yards and completed 72% of his passes last season, and he’ll helm what might be the country’s best team in 2024.
So yeah, this is the top tier. In another season, the bar might be set a little higher, but it’s also likely these guys are a good bit better than you’re thinking.
What you need to know:
Milroe led the country with 26 scrambles for a first down, including four that led to touchdowns last season.
No QB had a higher percentage of his dropbacks come vs. zone last season than Milroe (70.2%). Interestingly, Milroe actually thrived vs. zone coverage (11.2 yards per pass, 64.9 raw QBR, 16 TD, 4 INT) and struggled more vs. man coverage (8.3 yards per pass, 55.4 raw QBR, 5 TDs and 2 picks).
Beck vs. ranked (at game time) opponents last season: 92.0 Total QBR, 74% completions, 13 touchdowns, 2 interceptions, 10.02 yards/att.
Ewers when Texas was trailing at any point last season: 72.7% completions, 5 touchdowns, 1 interception, 10.3 yards/attempt and 15% of his throws went for at least 20 yards.
Last year at Oregon, Bo Nix averaged 6.24 air yards per throw, 121st nationally. At Oklahoma last season, Gabriel averaged 9.2, and he has averaged 9.9 over his career. How much will Oregon’s offense evolve to fit Gabriel’s skill set?
No returning QB in 2024 provided more value per dropback to his team last year than Gabriel, who added 0.47 expected points per dropback. Next: Liberty’s Kaidon Salter (0.45), Beck (0.45) and Milroe (0.41).
TIER 2: It’s Tier 1 with an asterisk (six players)
After totaling 31 touchdowns last season, Shedeur Sanders looks to help Colorado towards a winning record this coming season. Chet Strange-USA TODAY Sports
Arizona’s Noah Fifita
Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders
Kansas’s Jalon Daniels
Miami’s Cam Ward
Utah’s Cam Rising, Sam Huard
Numbers-wise, you could make a compelling case for any of these starting quarterbacks to reside in our top tier. Frankly, you could flip this group with the one above, and it would only garner a few ugly looks. But if we’re jotting down our list of pros and cons, this group has perhaps one or two extra lines on the negative side of the ledger — items, it should be noted, almost entirely out of their control — that we can’t overlook.
Fifita and Ward have new head coaches. Daniels and Rising are coming off serious injuries. Sanders played behind an offensive line that more often resembled a subway turnstile than an effective pass-blocking unit.
And yet, the pros column is plenty long, too, so we won’t be at all surprised if someone from this tier is holding up a Heisman Trophy at season’s end. They’ll just need a few things to go their way in 2024 beyond what they do with the ball in their hand.
What you need to know:
Over his final eight games of the season, Fifita threw for 22 touchdowns, five INTs and completed 72% of his throws, averaging 8.6 yards-per-attempt. The only Power 5 QBs with more pass TDs in that span were Oregon’s Nix and LSU’s Daniels, who both finished top three in Heisman voting.
Sanders faced six teams that were ranked at game time last year and played spectacularly in those games: 68% completions, 14 touchdown passes and 1 interception. But Colorado was 1-5 in those games, and he was sacked 28 times.
As much was made of Sanders’ lack of protection up front — and it was bad — he was sacked less often, pressured about as often and blitzed far less often than Alabama’s Milroe. That said, when Sanders wasn’t pressured, he was borderline unstoppable: 76% completions, 16 TD, 0 INT and 25 completions of 20 yards or more.
A comparison:
QB A: 14 starts, 84.0 Total QBR, 67.8% completions, 8.4 yards/attempt, 38 TDs and 9 turnovers
QB B: 15 starts, 84.1 Total QBR, 65.4% completions, 8.8 yards/attempt, 39 TDs and 12 turnovers
Both QBs are clearly elite, and you might not be surprised to learn that QB B was Heisman finalist and top-10 NFL draft pick Michael Penix Jr. in 2023. QB A, though? That’d be Kansas’ Daniels, but because of injury issues, those stats reflect all his starts vs. FBS teams since 2021.
It’s pretty easy to quantify just how much Rising means to Utah statistically. Over the past three years with Rising at QB, the Utes averaged 6.6 yards per play, 7.6 yards per dropback, posted an 83.9 raw QBR and scored 39.1 points per game in his starts. With anyone else at QB, 5.3 yards per play, 5.7 yards per dropback, a 51.3 QBR and they averaged 24.2 points per game. How many other QBs in the country are worth 15 points per game to their teams?
TIER 3: Checking the upside meter (nine players)
Memphis’ Seth Henigan, Cade Cunningham
Missouri’s Brady Cook, Drew Pyne
Ohio State’s Will Howard, Devin Brown, Julian Sayin
Ole Miss’s Jaxson Dart, Walker Howard
The four QB1s in this group have — combined — started 119 games (at least 27 each) and thrown 217 passing touchdowns in their careers. They have the one trait no one can teach: Experience. They’re savvy. They’re veterans. They’re leaders. That’s the good news.
The question is, do we already know everything about these quarterbacks? Or are they capable of surprising us in 2024? When we’ve seen Dart, Henigan, Howard and Cook start games for top-10 teams over the course of years, it’s easy to feel like we’ve got a good handle on just how good they are because, frankly, they’ve been pretty consistent in their performances.
And, if we’re being honest, that consistency puts them squarely in the “pretty darned good” group, which is a compliment, but for quarterbacks hoping to win some hardware, might actually feel like an insult.
Among returning qualified quarterbacks, they finished eighth (Dart), 11th (Cook), 13th (Howard) and 19th (Henigan) in Total QBR last season, which puts them pretty squarely in the B+ category. Again, that’s great unless you really want that A.
It’s certainly possible — likely, maybe — that at least one or two from this group will take another step forward. There are Joe Burrow stories every year (though perhaps not quite to the degree that Burrow did it). But if your goal is to get rich quickly in the QB stock market, these wouldn’t be where you’d invest. They’re the blue chips with a long history of marching forward in steady fashion.
Again, that’s meant to be a compliment.
What you need to know:
Henigan over the last seven games of the year: 6-1 record, 67.4% completions, 8.5 yards per attempt, 21 touchdowns and 2 picks. He averaged 333 yards of offense per game. In his bowl game, he completed 70% of his throws with four TD passes against an Iowa State defense that was allowing less than 55% completions and had given up just 17 passing touchdowns in 12 games previously.
Henigan has 79 career TD passes in three seasons at Memphis. If he just hits his career average this season, he’d finish with 105, putting him into the top 25 all time, tied with Mariota. He’d also be just the second QB since 2013 to post four straight seasons with at least 25 total touchdowns. (Tulane’s Michael Pratt did it from 2020 through 2023.)
Percentage of throws to wide-open receivers beyond the line of scrimmage last year:
Will Howard, soon to be Ohio State’s QB, 12.5% (112th out of 126 qualified QBs)
Kyle McCord, last year’s Ohio State QB, 19.6% (33rd)
Since he became Kansas State’s starter in 2022, 19.3% of Howard’s throws were to wide-open receivers, while Ohio State QBs have averaged 25.4%. Life should be easier for Howard in Columbus.
Since Week 11 of 2022, Missouri’s Cook has completed 65.3% of his passes, averaged 7.7 yards per dropback and posted a 4.83 pass TD-to-INT rate. The full list of others (minimum eight starts) to do that: LSU’s Daniels, Oregon’s Nix, Oklahoma’s Gabriel and USC’s Williams. Elite company.
Against Georgia and Alabama last season, Dart completed 58% of his throws, averaged 6.8 yards per pass, failed to throw a TD and tossed two picks. Against everyone else, he completed 66% of his passes, averaged 9.3 yards per attempt, tossed 23 touchdowns and just three interceptions.
TIER 4: The young and the restless (nine players)
Kansas State’s Avery Johnson
Nebraska’s Dylan Raiola, Heinrich Haarberg
Oklahoma’s Jackson Arnold, Casey Thompson
Tennessee’s Nico Iamaleava, Gaston Moore
USC’s Miller Moss, Jayden Maiava
That QB stock market we mentioned in Tier 3? Yeah, these are the guys who are either going to make you a ridiculous return on investment or force you to pick up some side hustles just to make rent.
Someone in this group is going to make an enormous mark on the 2024 season. There’s just too much talent. But Johnson, Raiola, Arnold, Iamaleava and Moss combine for 23 stars on the recruiting trail and four starts on the actual field. By year’s end, we won’t be surprised if there are a couple Tier 1 QBs in this group and, perhaps, a couple Tier 18 guys, too.
What you need to know:
Bowl opt-outs stink, but if there’s a silver lining to last year’s postseason exodus, it was that we got a sneak peek at this group. Johnson, Arnold, Iamaleava and Moss all got a start in their respective bowl games, and the performances offered ample reason for optimism. The trio combined for 83.7 Total QBR, 1,211 total yards, 15 touchdowns and 5 turnovers. And they all played against top-20 opponents.
Since Chris Klieman took over at Kansas State in 2019, Wildcats QBs have 54 rushing TDs, trailing only Oklahoma among Power 5 schools. Johnson rushed for 71 yards and a score in last year’s bowl game.
Nebraska has not finished in the top 25 nationally in Total QBR in any season since 2012. The Huskers haven’t had a QB throw 20 TDs and 10 or fewer interceptions in a season since Zac Taylor did it in 2006. (Of note: Forty different FBS QBs did that just last year.) Tanner Lee (pick No. 203 in 2017) is the only Nebraska QB drafted in the past 30 years. All of this is to say that, while Raiola is a tremendous prospect, he’s up against a lot of history in Lincoln.
On the flip side, whoever ends up the full-time starter at Southern California will have history on his side. In Lincoln Riley’s nine years as a Power 5 coordinator or head coach, his QB has never finished worse than 11th in Total QBR. He had three QBs win the Heisman (and all three were later selected No. 1 overall in the NFL draft), and has a second-, third- and fourth-place finish on his résumé, too.
Riley can take ample credit for Oklahoma’s run of elite QB play, but it’s worth noting this comparison:
Oklahoma 2020-21: 80.8 Total QBR with 62 TD passes and 17 INTs
Oklahoma 2022-23: 79.7 Total QBR with 61 TD passes and 17 INTs
As an FBS offensive coordinator or head coach (since 2011), Josh Heupel’s offenses have averaged 3,551 passing yards and 29 passing touchdowns a year. In his six seasons as a head coach at UCF and Tennessee, his QBs have thrown a total of 30 interceptions. For comparison, Georgia Southern threw 20 last year. Overall as a head coach, his QBs have a 6.3-to-1 TD:INT rate. That’s three times better than the FBS average, and only Alabama as a team has posted a better rate over that span (6.44).
TIER 5a: The Transfer Market II: Endgame (eight players)
Florida’s Graham Mertz, D.J. Lagway
Georgia Tech’s Haynes King, Zach Pyron
Virginia Tech’s Kyron Drones, Collin Schlee
Oklahoma State’s Alan Bowman, Garret Rangel
We’re still in the very early stages of properly evaluating the impact of the transfer portal on QB play around the country, but last year’s numbers tell a pretty clear story. There were 113 FBS quarterbacks who started at least eight games. That group can be separated into three distinct categories: homegrown talent, first-year transfers and transfers who had been on campus for more than one season.
Dig into those three camps and you’ll see a stark difference between them:
Homegrown talent (48 QBs): 60.0 Total QBR, 61.9% completions, 2.2-to-1 TD:TO ratio, 6.8 yards per dropback
First-year transfers (36 QBs): 58.1 Total QBR, 62.1% completions, 1.9-to-1 TD:TO ratio, 6.4 yards per dropback
Multiyear transfers (29 QBs): 70.0 Total QBR, 65% completions, 3-to-1 TD:TO ratio, 7.4 yards per dropback
What does this mean exactly? Could be nothing. After all, it’s a one-year sample set, and some of those multiyear quarterbacks were established successes even in 2022 (Penix, Nix, Gabriel, Williams).
But it could also be that success is correlated with familiarity of a system and comfort in an offense, and so Year 2 (or beyond) starters are simply better. This makes some intuitive sense, which leads to a better question: Who might be best primed to take a leap in Year 2 after a transfer in 2024?
Mertz, King, Drones and Bowman look like the obvious choices. All had some degree of success in Year 1 at their new schools, but all should be well-positioned to take another step in Year 2, with some pretty clear areas in need of improvement.
What you need to know:
A comparison:
QB A: 18 starts, 59.9% completions, 6.92 yards/dropback, 44 total TDs, 23 turnovers, 4,819 total yards
QB B: 17 starts, 60.1% completions, 6.92 yards/dropback, 46 total TDs, 15 turnovers, 4,192 total yards
Aside from those pesky turnovers, you’d certainly say they’re incredibly similar in their production, right? QB A shouldered a bigger load for his offense, so perhaps the turnovers aren’t a surprise.
Who are they? QB A is the career starts for Georgia Tech’s King, who flourished after escaping Jimbo Fisher’s offense at Texas A&M but clearly has some room to cut back on the mistakes. QB B is the career starting stats for Ohio State’s Howard, who figures to be the most important transfer quarterback of the 2024 season. We’d wager few Ohio State fans are excited about their quarterback looking a lot like King, but it might actually be a credit to what King could do in 2024 instead.
Playoff-era ACC QBs to throw for 2,800 yards and 25 touchdowns and rush for 700 yards and 10 touchdowns: Lamar Jackson (twice), Deshaun Watson, Jerod Evans and King.
SEC quarterbacks to complete 70% of their throws, have 20 pass touchdowns and no more than six turnovers in a season over the past 20 years: LSU’s Daniels, Alabama’s Mac Jones and Tua Tagovailoa and … Florida’s Mertz.
An odd split for Oklahoma State’s
