Week 6 SEC QB Power Rankings: From work in progress to finished product, the maxed-out Jalen Milroe is even better than advertised

Quarterbacks: There are a lot of them! Each week throughout the season, we’ll help you keep the game’s most important position in perspective by ranking the SEC starters 1-16 according to highly scientific processes and/or pure gut-level instinct. Previously: Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5.

1. Jalen Milroe | Alabama

It’s been a year and change since Milroe was demoted just a few weeks into his tenure as Alabama’s starting quarterback, and frankly seems like longer. Looking back, though, I’m still not quite over the fact that there was ever a moment — even an episode, a glitch, however brief — when his future seemed in doubt. Did it even make sense at the time? Because the more we see of him, the more absurd it is that anyone could have ever considered him anything less than a natural-born dude. People in the not-too-distant future won’t believe it: Jalen Milroe, benched? For … who, again? Some lacrosse player? A tall tale, surely. Let’s get you to bed, old man. It’s already getting harder to believe for those of us who were around to actually witness it.

Not that there’s ever been any question about Milroe’s potential. But Bama’s heart-stopping, 41-34 win over Georgia was our first glimpse of that potential in full bloom, and the maxed-out Milroe defies hyperbole. Opposite the most respected defense in the country, on the biggest stage of the regular season, he set career highs for completion percentage (81.8%), passing yards (374), total yards (491) and Total QBR (98.5); it was his second-best performance in terms of EPA (13.5), coming in behind only last year’s breakthrough win over LSU. He became the first player in the 89-year history of the AP poll to account for 300 yards passing, 100 yards rushing and 2 rushing touchdowns vs. a top-5 opponent.

Per Pro Football Focus, he was 3-for-3 on attempts of 20+ air yards, 17-for-19 when blitzed, and 5-for-6 under pressure. He was flawless early, leading the Tide to 4 touchdowns on their first 4 offensive possessions, and clutch late, connecting on a go-ahead (and ultimately game-winning) 75-yard TD strike that entered directly into the canon of plays you’ll always remember where you were when you saw them. In a collision of the 2 most high-wattage rosters in the college game, he quickly made it clear that he was the brightest star on the field.

https://twitter.com/AlabamaFTBL/status/1840190380999876625/

Of course, Milroe was not perfect: He threw his first interception of the season, erasing a prime scoring opportunity inside the UGA 25-yard line in the second quarter; the spell broke on that play, after which the Tide punted on 5 of their next 6 possessions while Georgia clawed its way out of the grave. In the end, though, it was Milroe’s night, the culmination of a career arc that has carried him from scapegoat to Heisman frontrunner with a bullet. There’s a long way to go in that race, and even longer to go in his bid to be QB1 in the 2025 NFL Draft. But if he hadn’t already, he left no doubt on Saturday night that he’s going to be around for the long haul.
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(Last week: 3⬆)

2. Quinn Ewers | Texas

Arch Manning‘s guest-hosting stint as QB1 could have hardly gone any better, but with Ewers well-rested and Oklahoma on deck there’s no controversy about who’s going to be in the saddle against the Sooners in Week 7. It’s Ewers’ job until further notice. That said, how the Longhorns handle the murmurs every time they go two consecutive possessions without scoring will be an intriguing subplot. If Ewers slumps even a little, it’s always possible that notice could be coming a lot more quickly that anyone would have imagined a month ago.
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(Last week: 2⬌)

3. Jaxson Dart | Ole Miss

After a dominant run through the nonconference slate, Dart came in for a reality check against Kentucky, which executed its rope-a-dope blueprint to perfection in a 20-17 upset. The Wildcats kept the ball out of the Rebels’ hands, amassing a nearly two-to-one edge in time of possession; they generated pressure without sending extra rushers, sacking Dart 3 times on non-blitzing downs, per PFF; and they got stops, holding Ole Miss to 1-for-10 on 3rd-down conversions. The Rebels still averaged a healthy 6.3 yards per play, but their 56 offensive snaps matched the fewest of Lane Kiffin’s tenure.
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(Last week: 1⬇)

4. Carson Beck | Georgia

Beck’s roller-coaster of a performance at Alabama broke down into two distinct phases: Digging the hole and digging out of it.

On one hand, Beck spent most of the night in QB hell. He connected on his first throw, a 15-yard completion, and was on-target on his second throw, a beautifully placed deep ball that was dropped. From that point, the rest of Beck’s first half bordered on a full-fledged meltdown: Excluding a cluster of meaningless completions against a prevent defense to end the half, he went into the locker room 6-for-17 passing for 29 yards, 2 interceptions, and an intentional grounding penalty from his own end zone that resulted in a safety. He looked uncomfortable, rushed and rattled by the circumstances for the first time in his career; Georgia trailed, 30-7, in what anyone who’d watched up to that point could safely assume was a blowout in progress.

But then, to his credit, Beck came closer to pulling off a miracle in the second half than anyone had any right to expect. In fact, for a brief, fleeting moment, he was poised to go out as the hero: While Bama’s offense took its turn in the freezer, Beck heated up, leading 3 straight touchdown drives in the fourth quarter in increasingly explosive fashion. His 3rd TD pass, an aggressive, 67-yard strike to a wide-open Dillon Bell, put Georgia up 34-33 with 2 1/2 minutes to play; had it held, it would have been an instant entry in the rotation of the most memorable plays in school history, falling somewhere between “Run Lindsay Run” and Stetson Bennett IV’s game-winning touchdown pass to beat Ohio State in the 2022 Peach Bowl. It was right up there … for all of 13 seconds, which is how long it took for it to be eclipsed by Jalen Milroe and Ryan Williams going 75 yards the other way on the first play of the ensuing Bama possession.

It was that kind of night for Beck, who was doomed to go out as the goat after his final pass was picked off in the end zone — his 4th turnover, and the one that will linger. Altogether, Beck put the ball in the air a very un-Georgia-like 50 times, easily a career high, including 17 attempts of 20+ air yards; he finished with a career low for completion percentage (52.9%) and his worst QBR rating (70.1) since Week 2 of last season. Yet even on his worst night he managed to put the team in position to win late against some of the steepest odds he could have faced.

On its own, a hot-and-cold effort in a hostile road environment might get filed away under “any given Saturday.” But Beck, whose last outing was a mediocre turn in a 13-12 win at Kentucky in Week 3, has now had 2 of them in a row. He has not been abandoned by the mock draft circuit, which still generally regards him as a top pick next spring and a candidate to go No. 1 overall. His stock might have been slightly cooler on Sunday morning than it had been 24 hours earlier, but considering where it was as a of halftime on Saturday night, it could been a whole lot worse.
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(Last week: 4⬌)

5. Garrett Nussmeier | LSU

Nussmeier was the volume eater of the early season, ranking in the top 5 nationally in attempts, yards and touchdowns through the first 5 weeks. Dating to last year’s bowl game, he’s topped 300 yards passing in 5 of his 6 career starts, and thrown multiple touchdown passes in all 6. Defying his statuesque reputation, he’s also been excellent at avoiding sacks, having gone down just once on 36 pressured drop-backs, per PFF; that works out to a pressure-to-sack ratio of just 2.8%, best in the Power 4.
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(Last week: 6⬆)>

6. Brady Cook | Missouri

It was an eerily quiet September for Cook, who ended the month ranked in the bottom half of the conference in yards per attempt (15th), efficiency (12th), QBR (9th) and overall PFF grade (10th) while presiding over a 4-0 start for a top-10 team. This week Mizzou takes the nation’s longest active winning streak on the road to Texas A&M, the first real test of the Tigers’ staying power as Playoff contenders.
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(Last week: 5⬇)

7. Nico Iamaleava | Tennessee

They don’t keep records for this sort of thing, but between the 6-6 Iamaleava and the 6-6 Taylen Green, Tennessee’s trip to Arkansas must rank among the lankiest quarterback matchups of all-time. How many games can you remember where both starting QBs look like they could have just as easily have decided to become a 3-and-D wing in the NBA?
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(Last week: 6⬌)

8. Diego Pavia | Vanderbilt

It’s Bama Week for the ‘Dores. Has a Vandy quarterback ever had a successful outing against Alabama? Sure, but you have to go back a ways — way, way back. In 8 meetings since the turn of the century the Commodores haven’t topped 10 points in any of them. (If you’re wondering, only 1 of those games involved Jay Cutler, in his freshman season at Vanderbilt in 2002.) They haven’t scored 20 against Bama since 1996, in a 36-26 loss; they haven’t scored 30 since their last win in the series, a 30-21 decision in 1984. I like Pavia’s scrappy style, but there isn’t enough scrap in the entire state of Tennessee to keep it interesting against the Tide.
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(Last week: 8⬌)

9. Conner Weigman or Marcel Reed | Texas A&M

Weigman is back atop the official depth chart this week after a 3-week absence due to a nagging shoulder injury, but given how solid Reed has looked in the meantime the jury is very much out on what the position will actually look like this weekend against Missouri. For his part, Eli Drinkwitz isn’t buying the idea that a healthy Weigman will find the job waiting for him, telling reporters at his weekly Monday press conference that the alleged pecking order isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. “I know on their depth chart, it says the other kid (Weigman) is the starting quarterback,” Drinkwitz said. “But that’s just semantics, in my opinion. The guy (Reed) is 3-0 as the starter and whether he’s listed as questionable or whatever, I don’t see him going back.” We’ll all find out on Saturday together.
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(Last week: n/a | 9⬌)

10. Taylen Green | Arkansas

On this week’s episode of Taylen Green: Chaos Agent: Green uncorked a 75-yard touchdown pass on the third play of the game, then went on to commit 3 turnovers (2 fumbles, 1 interception) in the Razorbacks’ loss to Texas A&M. Green fumbled 4 times altogether against the Aggies, bringing his total for the season to 9 fumbles, per PFF — 2 more than any other FBS player.
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(Last week: 10⬌)

11. LaNorris Sellers | South Carolina

Sellers is back at practice and listed atop the depth chart for this weekend’s game against Ole Miss after sitting out the Gamecocks’ Week 4 romp over Akron with a sore ankle. Shane Beamer has been cagy about whether Sellers will actually play on Saturday, but given the drop-off in arm talent from Sellers to scrambly backup Robby Ashford, there’s no controversy. It’s strictly a question of the former’s health.
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(Last week: 11⬌)

12. Brock Vandagriff | Kentucky

He took a beating in the process, but Vandagriff played his best game yet as a Wildcat against Ole Miss, finishing 18-for-28 for 243 yards, 1 touchdown and no turnovers en route to the upset. Crucially, he also kept the chains (and the clock) moving with his legs, picking up 5 first downs as a runner in incremental chunks. And he delivered his best throw of the year, an improbable, 4th-and-7 heave to Barion Brown with the game on the line. The play gained 63 yards, easily Kentucky’s longest of the season, and set up the go-ahead/game-winning touchdown.

https://twitter.com/UKFootball/status/1840108045537247558/

Mark Stoops conceded after the game that he wasn’t concerned with playing the percentages in that spot, telling reporters “your analytics will tell you to punt it.” Which, no kidding. But of the 2 head coaches involved in this game, who would have bet on Stoops being the one who turned down an obvious punting situation to let it all ride on a one-one-one bomb down the sideline? It’s a heck of a call … when it works.
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(Last week: 13⬆)

13. Graham Mertz and DJ Lagway | Florida

The Gators’ last time out, a 45-28 win at Mississippi State in Week 4, was proof of concept for what the Mertz/Lagway rotation is supposed to look like under ideal conditions. Now comes the gauntlet. Florida initially opened as a narrow favorite this weekend against UCF, but by Tuesday the line had already flipped to favor the Knights. (Who just suffered a blowout loss at the hands of Colorado, for the record.) If that holds until kickoff, there’s a good chance Florida won’t be favored again until the season finale against Florida State, by which point both teams are on track to be in the market for a new head coach.
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(Last week: 12⬇)

14. Michael Hawkins Jr. | Oklahoma

Hawkins was predictably rough around the edges in a come-from-behind, 27-21 win over Auburn, but he gave OU all you can ask from a fledgling QB making his first career start on the road: He broke one big play as a runner, connected on one big play as a passer, converted both into touchdowns and didn’t commit a turnover. That’s 1-0 football. Up next: An open date, followed by another baptism by fire against Texas.
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(Last week: 14⬌)

15. Payton Thorne | Auburn

Look, Thorne is who he is: A cromulent quarterback who gives Auburn its best chance to win on most weekends, and who cannot stop throwing killer interceptions at the worst possible moment. It’s a frustrating combination, because he has a knack for lulling you into thinking maybe he’s turned over a new leaf. In their loss to Oklahoma, the Tigers outgained OU by a whopping 191 yards, 482 to 291, with 26 first downs to the Sooners’ 11. At times, Thorne looked as good as he’s looked in an Auburn uniform vs. a real opponent, especially throwing downfield: Per PFF, he was 5-for-6 passing on attempts on 20+ air yards, including touchdowns covering 31 yards and 48 yards, respectively.

But the Tigers left points on the field in a variety of ways, and with the game on the line Thorne’s worst instincts took over.

That just happened. @KipLewis9 | #OUDNA pic.twitter.com/xmmZmYgoma

— Oklahoma Football (@OU_Football) September 28, 2024

Thorne defended his decision in a local radio interview, telling the hosts “quite honestly, if I had that play over 10 times, I probably would have done the same thing 10 times out of 10.” Which, to be fair, you can see where he’s coming from: The linebacker who wound up with the pick, Kip Lewis, initially attacked as if he was coming on a blitz; that was a feint, but as Lewis attempted to disengage and drop into coverage he was literally shoved backward into the throwing lane by an Auburn lineman, leaving him off-balance and stumbling awkwardly as the ball left Thorne’s hand. On its own, it might be possible to chalk it up as a random case of bad luck — not as unlucky as an on-target ball deflecting off his receiver’s hands directly into the opponents’, but the kind of thing that sometimes happens to everybody.

In Thorne’s case, though, it has happened much too often.

He’s thrown an SEC-worst 6 interceptions, which have played a role in all 3 of the Tigers’ losses. He was much better the past 2 weeks against Arkansas and Oklahoma than in the 4-INT meltdown against Cal-Berkeley in Week 2 that got him benched for the equally erratic Hank Brown, but the results were the same. Thorne really is Auburn’s best option, and Hugh Freeze has no one to blame for that but himself.
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(Last week: 15⬌)

16. Michael Van Buren Jr. | Mississippi State

Van Buren didn’t move the needle in the Bulldogs’ 35-13 loss at Texas, but under the circumstances — true freshman making his first career start on the road against the No. 1 team in the country — the bar was set at survival. He endured 6 sacks (including a strip sack, his lone turnover), but wasn’t picked, threw the Horns Down after scoring his first career touchdown in garbage time, and made it back to Starkville in one piece ahead of an open date. Next up: A Week 7 trip to … uh, Georgia. Woof. Hang in there kid.
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(Last week: 16⬌)

Matt Hinton

Matt Hinton, author of 'Monday Down South' and our resident QB guru, has previously written for Dr. Saturday, CBS and Grantland.