Back for More: The Best Returning QBs in College Football for 2024
Back for More: The Best Returning QBs in College Football for 2024
Whether coming back to the same team or transferring elsewhere, these FBS quarterbacks bring the most value back from last season.
College football officially starts a week from tomorrow, and I couldn’t be more excited.1 It’s the first season of the new 12-team playoff format, which should open up more teams to have a shot at the national title, even if the favorites are still all the usual suspects. And while many of last year’s top stars — headlined by former LSU (and current Washington Commanders) QB Jayden Daniels — are off in the NFL now, plenty of other big names are still in school and ready to keep shining on the college stage.
That’s why I thought it might be fun to run through the top quarterbacks who fit the latter category: those who produced the most value (according to schedule-adjusted Points Above Replacement, which includes both passing and rushing production) in 2023 and are back in college football for 2024. At the end, I’ll also run through the teams who lost the most QB PAR since last season, and who might replace that this year.
1. Dillon Gabriel, Oklahoma Oregon, Sr.
2023 stats (w/ Sooners): 82.1 PAA,2 136.2 PAR, 11.35 PAR/Gm
Gabriel transferred to the Ducks last December — his second transfer after starting his career at UCF — to replace Heisman finalist Bo Nix, and he is coming off an electric season in Norman that saw him pass for 3,660 yards with 30 TDs versus just 6 INTs. Nix put up 181.1 PAR in Oregon’s offense last year, so Gabriel will probably improve on last season’s career-high figure.
2. Carson Beck, Georgia, Sr.
2023 stats: 68.3 PAA, 122.4 PAR, 8.74 PAR/Gm
Beck came into 2023 with the unenviable task of replacing two-time championship-winning starter Stetson Bennett, and UGA’s run of consecutive titles ended on Beck’s watch. However, Beck had more PAR in 2023 than Bennett did in the first of those championship seasons (98.9 PAR in 2021), and he’s a good bet for a monster season with Georgia tabbed at No. 1 in the preseason AP poll.
3. Quinn Ewers, Texas, Jr.
2023 stats: 59.6 PAA, 110.9 PAR, 9.24 PAR/Gm
Ewers more than doubled his freshman-year PAR (53.8) from 2022 last year, holding off prized recruit/football royalty Arch Manning for the top job to lead the Longhorns to their first-ever College Football Playoff appearance. Just a junior, Ewers ought to challenge Colt McCoy in 2008 (175.1) and Vince Young in 2005 (159.0) for the most single-season PAR in Texas history.
4. Kaidon Salter, Liberty, Jr.
2023 stats: 56.3 PAA, 107.6 PAR, 7.69 PAR/Gm
Salter is not exactly a household name, but his stats last season were ridiculous: 3,965 yards of total offense — including 1,089 on the ground — with 44 total TDs against just 10 turnovers. Even after knocking 15.9 points off of his raw PAR for Liberty’s weak schedule, Salter was among the nation’s most productive QBs. He was the main reason why Liberty went 13-1 (granted, the “1” being a 45-6 loss to Oregon in the Fiesta Bowl), and he blew away the team’s previous FBS-level PAR record of 73.5 by future NFL draftee Malik Willis in 2021.
5. Jaxson Dart, Ole Miss, Sr.
2023 stats: 49.9 PAA, 104.0 PAR, 8.00 PAR/Gm
First of all, can we just note that “Jaxson Dart” is one of the best quarterback names in history? Second, he has lived up to it by throwing plenty of darts since transferring from USC to Mississippi. His 104.0 PAR last season fit right in with previously productive Rebel passers Matt Corral, Jordan Ta'amu, Chad Kelly, Bo Wallace and even Eli Manning — whose 2003 PAR (104.0) Dart matched exactly on the number 20 years later. Leading Lane Kiffin’s offense as a senior, Dart will have a good chance to challenge Kelly and Archie Manning for the best season in program history, while also being key to the Rebels’ best-ever chance of making the Playoff.
6. Jalen Milroe, Alabama, Jr.
2023 stats: 52.8 PAA, 103.2 PAR, 7.94 PAR/Gm
Given the keys to a Bama offense that had been run by a string of highly prolific QBs (Bryce Young, Mac Jones, Tua Tagovailoa, Jalen Hurts, etc.) in recent years, Milroe did his best impression of Young’s 2022 campaign — nearly matching his 111.2 PAR — and he led the Tide back into the Playoff after a rare one-year absence. He saved his worst game of the year for the semifinal loss to Michigan, but that may add extra motivation in Milroe’s first season running the same Kalen DeBoer offense that Michael Penix Jr. produced 152.4 PAR in last season with Washington.
7. Brady Cook, Missouri, Sr.
2023 stats: 47.8 PAA, 102.4 PAR, 7.88 PAR/Gm
Cook is an increasingly rare breed in modern college football: He’s played his entire career with the same program, rising up the ranks each season to become one of the SEC’s top QBs by his senior year. After posting a career-best 82.5 PAR in 2022, Cook improved to 102.4 last year — the school’s first 100+ PAR season since Drew Lock in 2018, and just the 10th ever for a program that has had some damn good QBs over the years (Lock, Chase Daniel, Brad Smith, James Franklin, Phil Bradley, Terry McMillan, etc). Throwing to Luther Burden III again, there’s no reason why Cook can’t have his best season yet with the Tigers.
8. Jordan McCloud, James Madison Texas State, Sr.
2023 stats (w/ Dukes): 39.4 PAA, 97.0 PAR, 7.46 PAR/Gm
Another of the more obscure players on the list, McCloud — who previously played at South Florida and Arizona (with a prior career high of just 17.3 PAR) — had nearly 100 PAR out of nowhere last year at JMU, leading the Dukes to an 11-2 season. Now McCloud transfers again to fellow SBC squad Texas State, which had the nation’s 17th-best SRS offense despite getting an OK-but-not-great 65.7 PAR out of former QB TJ Finley (who transferred to Western Kentucky). With McCloud at the helm in 2024, the Bobcats could have one of the nation’s scariest attacks.
9. Haynes King, Georgia Tech, Jr.
2023 stats: 41.6 PAA, 96.8 PAR, 7.45 PAR/Gm
It had been a long time since the Yellow Jackets had a signal-caller as productive as King, the former Texas A&M transfer, was in 2023. Specifically, the only QB in Tech history with a season better than King by PAR was the great Joe Hamilton (138.3 PAR) in 1999.
Some of that is because the Jackets spent 11 years running the run-heavy option under Paul Johnson — though that scheme yielded some decent seasons, such as Justin Thomas in 2014 (84.5 PAR) and the double-QB-trouble of Tevin Washington and Vad Lee in 2012 (89.0 combined PAR). Still, King gave this program3 an unusually strong passing threat, and he could move closer to the bar Hamilton set with fewer interceptions in 2024.
10. Seth Henigan, Memphis, Sr.
2023 stats: 29.3 PAA, 93.9 PAR, 7.23 PAR/Gm
Henigan showed up under Memphis’ entry on our list of sudden QB factories, after a third consecutive season of growth in Ryan Silverfield’s offense with the Tigers. His career numbers (10,764 passing yards, 79 TD passes) are getting into fairly rarified territory, and the expectation should be for Henigan to challenge Riley Ferguson’s single-season Memphis PAR record of 109.2 from 2017 this year.
11. Cameron Ward, Washington State Miami-FL, Sr.
2023 stats (w/ Cougars): 23.1 PAA, 91.7 PAR, 7.64 PAR/Gm
After starting his collegiate career in the FCS at Incarnate Word, Ward transferred to Wazzu and put up 91.7 PAR — borderline Mike Leach-era numbers — within a couple years of starting. Now Ward has transferred again to start for the Hurricanes, beating out Emory Williams and all-name team entry Reese Poffenbarger for the top spot. Though we’ve seen formerly prolific passers post up-and-down numbers after transferring to Miami (hello, D'Eriq King), Ward has the potential to be the ACC’s top QB in 2024.
Best of the Rest
Here are the rest of the Top 50 on our list (with the caveat that a player’s returning status is based on whether he is currently on an FBS roster at Sports-Reference/CFB):4
Shoes to Fill
The flip-side of all this are the teams who lost a bunch of QB production from last season — some of whom have replaced it more than others:
No team saw more QB PAR depart more than LSU — which makes sense, as Daniels produced the fifth-most PAR in a season since 1956 (193.5) en route to winning the Heisman and going second in the NFL draft. Garrett Nussmeier, who backed up Daniels the past two seasons — and had some moments in both the 2022 SEC title game and a couple of bowls — will get the call, but no shoes are bigger to fill in 2024.
Oregon, on the other hand, slides our No. 1 returning QB from above right in to replace Nix, the second-most productive QB lost. (Must be nice!) There’s a reason why the Ducks are instant Big Ten favorites during their first season in the conference. And there are few other interesting names on the list 2024 replacements for teams who lost prolific passers from 2023.
If our earlier list had been based on career production rather than simply 2023 numbers, Will Rogers (formerly of Mississippi State; now of Washington), D.J. Uiagalelei (formerly of Clemson and Oregon State; now of FSU), Will Howard (formerly of K-State; now of Ohio State) and Max Johnson (formerly of LSU and Texas A&M; now of UNC) would have shown up as established returnees. Now, they’ll try to pick up the slack for other programs’ departures — and see how much of their predecessors’ stats they can replicate for themselves.
CORRECTION (Aug. 16, 2024, 6:10 a.m.): The original/email version of this story was missing Mizzou’s Brady Cook from the returning QBs list because S-R/CFB doesn’t list him on the Tigers’ 2024 roster.
Filed under: College Football
We’ll see for how long, LOL. My Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets are actually in the very first game of the season, facing No. 10 Florida State in Dublin, Ireland.
Points Above Average: The same as Points Above Replacement, but relative to an average FBS QB.
My alma mater, for the sake of full disclosure. (And yes, I used this as an excuse to post a video of Hamilton, who was my idol as an 11-year-old child.)
I say this because they currently list Caleb Williams on USC’s roster for some reason.
2024 was supposed to be a down year for college quarterbacks entering the 2025 NFL Draft. After reading this piece, I'm not sure I'm seeing that, particularly when you include Sanders in the mix. With the recent positive performance of rookie quarterbacks entering the NFL, it appears that the NFL's adoption of familiar collegiate passing schemes and designed dual threat QB runs are allowing for easier integration into the NFL.
Not to be overly provocative, but are we entering a period where the position is becoming so well developed for the NFL that we will soon see an oversupply of quarterbacks entering the NFL?
With 4 to 6 solid NFL ready QBs each year entering a League for about 15 openings at the position (and an average career arc of 15 years or so), that paradigm shift is not particularly hard to see coming. When you consider the additional solid quarterbacks taken at the bottom or outside of the first round - Lamar, Purdy, Prescott, Hurts, Levis, O'Connell/Minshew, Cousins etc. - the arithmetic gets very interesting very quickly.
Economics could play an important part. Surpluses tend to drive prices down. With price of quarterbacks currently exploding relative to the cap (now more than 25% at the top), teams might look to embrace the cheaper collegiate pipeline every 5 years or so and use their cap for other impact pieces. Beyond Mahomes, the lack of Super Bowl success from these high priced "franchise" quarterbacks is alarming. You need to go all the way down to #14 - Matthew Stafford - to find success in this group. Hurts and Burrow were on rookie deals - and playing with loaded rosters - when they touched the Super Bowl.
In the late 90s it was common to read that retirements at the position would result in a crisis from a shortage of high performing quarterbacks. 25 years later, it seems the exact opposite is happening.
I’m surprised Notre Dame didn’t make the top QB lost list - but how do you define “replacement level” in this context?