Re-seeding the 12-team College Football Playoff bracket by quarterback play

The bracket for the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff is set and the collective college football consciousness has had a week to digest the field and much of the focus has been on the format’s flaws. Does Boise State deserve a first-round bye, what about Arizona State? Is No. 1 Oregon getting screwed with a Tennessee or Ohio State matchup in the quarterfinals while No. 6 Penn State has a clear path to the semis? To me, it’s perfectly chaotic, but it feels like change is inevitable, before the even more inevitable expansion to 14 or 16 teams. 

For now, though, let’s turn our attention from the format to the field. Which teams can win it all and why? Well, in many cases, even with underrecruited Stetson Bennett and underutilized JJ McCarthy accounting for the last three national titles, the teams best positioned for a championship, have the best quarterbacks. So what if we were to re-seed the bracket, which seemingly everyone already wants to do, but we ranked the teams in terms of quarterback play, would we get a fairer representation of the season? No automatic byes for conference championship quarterbacks in this exercise, just 1-12, the best QBs in the CFP. 

The quarterback class for the 2025 NFL Draft is a bit underwhelming and even the likely first-rounders, Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders and Miami’s Cam Ward, missed out on a seat at the CFP table. That complicated this rankings, as did the injury to Georgia’s Carson Beck and the possibility of an Arch Manning sighting in Auston for Texas’s Round 1 matchup with Clemson. Still, this committee of one reached a definitive re-seeding of the 12-team CFP by just looking at one position. 

Dillon Gabriel was a Heisman Trophy finalist for a reason, and even if you didn’t watch a single snap of his season before the Big Ten Championship Game against Penn State, you’d understand why. Gabriel was a hyper-efficient 22/32 for 283 yards with touchdowns, and he did it with just over a 2.50 second time to throw. By EPA/play, it was the best offensive performance against a Penn State defense since 2015, and Gabriel was the maestro.  

Gabriel has started the most games in college football history and is the nation’s all-time leading passer. That experience, combined with offensive coordinator Will Stein’s spread system and Oregon’s depth of dynamic pass catchers, has produced one of the most versatile and terrifying offenses in the country. Gabriel can papercut you to death with his accuracy, completing 83.4% of his throws on dropbacks of under 2.5 seconds and neutralizing even the best pass rushes in the country, or he can go bombs away, averaging 20.2 yards per attempt on throws of over 20 yards downfield, the second best among 139 eligible FBS quarterbacks. 

There were so many games when the Oregon offense took its foot off the gas after building a first-half lead, so Gabriel’s 3,500-yard 28-touchdown season could’ve been even more impressive, but it’s going to be pedal to the metal for Gabriel and Stein in the College Football Playoff, and that could mean a National Championship. 

Drew Allar moving Penn State to the No. 2 seed could feel controversial, but watching Allar all season, unencumbered by his underwhelming sophomore season in 2023 and the massive expectations as a five-star recruit in 2022, he’s been lights out, especially considering his circumstances. And this exercise, as difficult as it may be, is an attempt to rank these 12 quarterbacks, outside of their circumstances. Which quarterback, if everything else was equal, would you want on your team for a CFP run? There’s only one guy I’m taking over Allar, and it’s the one that beat him in a shootout with the Big Ten title on the line. 

Allar is a big-armed accurate pocket-passer, but what’s been most impressive about his season is his creativity. Penn State has a 95th-percentile late-down success rate of 52.3%, and an effective run-game keeping this offense on schedule is one reason for that, but Allar is the other. In the offseason, Allar dropped 10 pounds to be more athletic and it’s translated to 30 runs for first down, surprisingly the fourth-most among this group of 12 QBs, and some miraculous plays avoiding pressure, like his two fourth-down conversions on the game-tying touchdown drive against USC, or his fourth-down TD pass in the fourth quarter against Oregon while a defender was pulling him down by his undershirt. Oh, and there’s this throw, which I’m not sure how many other QBs on this list can make. 

New OC Andy Kotelnicki has unlocked the explosiveness in Allar’s game, producing a 10.5% explosive pass rate, but Allar has maintained his aversion to negative plays, with the third-lowest turnover-worthy play rate and third-lowest pressure-to-sack rate of this group.

 He’s sixth in the country in yards/dropback and fourth in passing success rate, completing nearly 70% of his passes, up 10% from last season, with an average depth of target of 9.0, up over a yard from 2023. Kotelnicki is a big reason for that improvement, and tight end Tyler Warren put together a legendary season, but Allar has been hyper-efficient despite the most underwhelming group of wide receivers in this field (and that includes Arizona State without Jordan Tyson). 

Cade Klubnik had a similar progression from Year 1 as his team’s starter to Year 2 as Allar did, though, without a coordinator change. The 2023 Clemson offense led by Garrett Riley and Cade Klubnik was a sick experiment in how far a football team could go if it only attempted five-yard passes, and now they’re throwing it all over the yard. The Tigers lacked talent at wide receiver, and Klubnik finished the year with an average depth of target of 7.0 yards, 167th of 178 FBS quarterbacks. The offense produced an explosive play rate of 7.0% which was sixth-percentile, and the unit appeared to be tailored around Klubnik’s weaknesses and lack of arm strength. Well, after watching him play in 2024, that clearly wasn’t the case. 

In 2024, Klubnik has developed into one of the best quarterbacks in the entire country, throwing for 3,303 yards and 33 touchdowns with 458 yards and seven scores on the ground. In plenty of seasons, he would’ve been a clear Heisman Trophy finalist, but this year had too many special performances and too many Clemson losses. 

Klubnik has upped his ADOT to 9.5 yards and now attempts 16% of his throws over 20 yards downfield, connecting on 43.1% of them and averaging 15.7 yards per attempt with 15 touchdowns to three interceptions. He can still hit all the underneath throws that keep Riley’s up-tempo spread system on schedule, but he’s added an explosive element with his deep ball and with his legs. Klubnik is sixth in the country in EPA/rush at 0.39, with 239 yards on scrambles and 315 on designed runs. He’s become an efficient offense unto himself, withstanding 27 drops, the 10th most in the country. 

Rhett Lashlee brought SMU into its first season in the ACC with Preston Stone as his starting quarterback, before eventually ceding the job to the far more athletic Jennings. SMU’s offensive line had problems pass protecting early in the season, and those reappeared against Clemson in the ACC Championship Game, but Jennings offsets those issues, averaging 9.8 yards per attempt on pressured dropbacks with a 12.2% pressure-to-sack ratio. 

At his core, Jennings is a big-game hunter, and while he has a reputation as a bit flighty in the pocket, he can play point guard as well as almost anyone. This season, he averaged 8.4 yards per attempt and completed 75.9% of his passes on dropbacks of fewer than 2.5 seconds, or “in rhythm” throws. His mobility is a feature, not a bug, helping to avoid negative plays, pick up yardage as a scrambler, and yes, hunt for deep shots. It’s a big reason why SMU has a manageable 43% success rate to complement its 96th percentile 12.7% explosive pass rate. 

Jennings introduces a bit more volatility than many of these other quarterbacks, but he also gives you a chance to come back as SMU did in the ACC title game because he can problem-solve outside of structure, and that’s immensely valuable against the best teams in the country. 

If this ranking were purely about talent and future NFL upside, Iamaleava would be an easy No. 1. The athletic 6-foot-6 former five-star has so much life in his arm, possibly too much. Iamaleava has struggled with overthrows in Josh Heupel’s veer-and-shoot downfield passing attack, and that’s left plenty of meat on the bone for a Tennessee offense that has, at times, relied too heavily on running back Dylan Sampson. 

With maybe the biggest arm of this bunch, Iamaleava is only completing 34.1% of his throws over 20 yards downfield, which in an offense that has failed to create many yards after the catch, has led to an explosive play rate of 7.0%, 13th percentile in college football. Surprisingly, because of all the RPO usage in this offense, Iamaleava has by far the highest play-action usage of this group and the highest in FBS football at 58.8%, and without it, his effectiveness craters. 

Even Maddux Madsen and Sam Leavitt, in offenses constructed entirely around Ashton Jeanty and Cam Skattebo, aren’t so reliant on play-action to be successful. In a neutral game script, when the threat of Sampson carrying the ball is in play, Iamaleava can thrive, but if Tennessee falls behind, the Vols are in trouble. That is all compounded by the redshirt freshman’s alarmingly high 26% pressure-to-sack ratio, but the talent is too enticing to drop him any further. 

In my mind, there are two different Quinn Ewers, the one that torched Michigan in the first half of Texas’s Week 2 win, navigating the pocket with authority and ripping throws all over the field, and the one that’s sustained oblique and ankle injuries this season fluttered every throw outside the numbers against Georgia in the SEC title game and is practically begging to throw a costly interception. The latter would be No. 2 on this list, and the former might be No. 10, so we’ll split the difference at six and see if the extra time to heel up pays off, or if Steve Sarkisian is forced to turn the ball over to Arch Manning. 

Ewers, even in his third year as Sark’s starting QB, is coddled by his play-caller relying heavily on screens and play-action. Rarely does Sark let Ewers sit back in the pocket and dissect a defense, which has led to a career-low ADOT of 7.4 yards, yet hasn’t curtailed a career-high 4.2% turnover-worthy play rate. 

Ewers has sustained so many injuries over his career, and it’s clear that they’re starting to wear on the former five-star recruit. He’s unwilling to stand in a muddy pocket and many times he’s unable to drive the ball outside the numbers. Don’t believe me, check out the difference in his numbers under pressure from 2023 to 2024. 

When he does take a shot, particularly around the red zone, he’s often just throwing the ball to a spot and hoping his receivers can track it down, which may have worked with Xavier Worthy a year ago, but has been largely ineffective with this year’s cast of characters. He’s never been one to throw with great anticipation, so if he can’t make up for that with his arm strength, he’s in trouble, and he’s been in trouble a lot. (Oh, and if Sark played Arch, even with a small sample, he’d be No. 4 on this list). 

It’s easy to think of Sam Leavitt, the redshirt freshman who transferred to ASU from Michigan State this offseason, as the perfect game manager for Kenny Dillingham’s Cam Skattebo-centric offense. A quarterback who can run-run-play-action pass his way to a Big 12 title, but even in a run-heavy offense, Leavitt is much more than that. 

Yes, he thrives off play-action, averaging 9.3 yards per attempt with 11 touchdowns to one interception. But he has gotten progressively more accurate as the season has progressed, has added 433 yards and five rushing touchdowns himself, without a single fumble, and the most impressive thing about his game is how he performs under pressure, where most game-manage types crumble. 

Adam Harstad of footballguys.com has this idea of viewing QB play as a three-legged stool with yards/attempts, interceptions, and sacks, and “pressure forces you to make trade-offs on those three legs.” Some sacrifice ypa with shorter throws (the check-down charlies) others force the ball and sacrifice interception% (the gunslingers), and others take sacks trying to play through pressure (the sack eaters). In this group, think of Riley Leonard as “the check-down Charlie”, Will Howard as “the gunslinger”, and Nico Iamaleava and Kurtis Rourke as “the sack eaters.” Leavitt is none of the above. On his 116 pressured dropbacks, Leavitt has a ypa of 9.5, a 1.6% turnover-worthy play rate, and a 13.8% pressure-to-sack ratio. 

Speaking of the “check-down Charlie,” Riley Leonard is averaging 3.7 yards per attempt when pressured this season, ranking him 135th out of 142 FBS quarterbacks with at least 50 pressured dropbacks. That’s not good. Leonard was not the passer that OC Mike Denbrock and Notre Dame expected to get when he transferred to South Bend from Duke this offseason, but Denbrock, who coached Jayden Daniels to a Heisman Trophy in 2023, has gotten the most out of him. 

Leonard has become a run-heavy QB, carrying the ball 117 times for 764 yards and 14 touchdowns. The Irish have bludgeoned inferior opponents with the two-headed backfield of Leonard and Jeremiyah Love, but if a defense in the CFP can stop the run and get out to an early lead, there isn’t much proof that Leonard can succeed if he’s forced to drop back 35-40 times a game. 

When Chip Kelly took over as Ohio State’s offensive coordinator, he clearly valued a quarterback who is additive in the run game, and that’s why the Buckeyes landed on Will Howard after shipping Kyle McCord off to Syracuse. Put behind the wheel of a $20 million roster, Howard has been simply asked not to crash, but in Ohio State’s three biggest games of the year, he’s made costly mistakes. 

Howard’s numbers are excellent, but what quarterback’s wouldn’t be throwing to Jeremiah Smith, Emeka Egbuka, and Carnell Tate? He’s gotten the ball out quickly to his playmakers, averaging 2.66 seconds to throw and completing 72% of those passes, but he’s only rushed for 213 yards, ninth most among this group, likely a far cry from Kelly’s expectations. Then, against Oregon, he played exceptionally well until a gaffe on the final drive that let the final seconds tick off the clock. Against Penn State, what should have been a blowout became a seven-point win with a goalline stand to close it out. Howard gave Penn State a 14-point swing with a pick-six on his first pass attempt and a fumble through the end zone that resulted in a touchback. Finally, against Michigan, always the biggest game of the year, Howard threw two awful interceptions in the 13-10 loss. One from his own four-yard line which led directly to the only Michigan touchdown, and the other in the red zone, keeping points off the board. 

If Howard can’t start to provide more in the run game or cut down on the costly turnovers, then Ohio State’s CFP run won’t last long. Just about every quarterback in the playoff could have led this roster to a 10-2 regular season, and many others would lead it to a national title, but it’s hard to expect that from Howard. 

Kurtis Rourke led Indiana on a remarkable 11-1 run, but this team and its quarterback are impossibly difficult to evaluate. The Hoosiers played FIU, Western Illinois, and Charlotte in non-conference, and only played one ranked team all season, Ohio State in Week 13. Rourke’s numbers are dazzling, first in the country in EPA/dropback, first in passing success rate at 57.8%, and fifth in yards per attempt, with a 27/4 TD-to-interception ratio. He’s a veteran disruptor who aggressively pushes the ball downfield and rarely makes mistakes, but his performance against the Buckeyes is impossible to unsee. 

In the 38-15 loss, Rourke finished 8/18 for 68 yards, and outside of a well-scripted 70-yard touchdown drive to open the game, and a meaningless 15-play 75-yard TD drive against prevent defense in the fourth, Indiana gained eight total yards. Rourke’s lack of mobility gave him no chance against pressure, despite averaging over 10 yards per attempt when pressured this season. Not all pressure is created equally. It’s a whole lot different when Ohio State gets home with Jack Sawyer and J.T. Tuimoloa than Charlotte or Northwestern’s edges bursting into the backfield. 

When Maddux Madsen beat out former five-star USC transfer Malachi Nelson for the starting job at Boise State, it was certainly a surprise, but after a 12-1 season and a Mountain West Championship to claim the No. 3 seed in the CFP, nobody is questioning Spencer Danielson’s decision. 

Madsen is undersized at 5-foot-10, but he’s smart, he’s tough, and he’s been incredibly underrated in Boise State’s run. It’s not easy to get out of Ashton Jeanty’s considerable shadow, but it is much easier to play alongside the Heisman Trophy candidate. Madsen, unsurprisingly plays his best off play-action with the defense terrified to give Jeanty an inch, and that’s led to a highly efficient passing attack, 19th in the country in EPA/dropback. 

However, Madsen can get himself into trouble if he holds onto the ball. When pressured, he has a 6.3% turnover-worthy play rate, and when he holds onto the ball for longer than 2.5 seconds, it becomes a feast-or-famine situation. On those extended dropbacks, Madsen has a 16/3 TD/INT ratio but has 12 of his 15 turnover-worthy plays on the year. Just because Mountain West defenders didn’t hold onto them, doesn’t mean Madsen wasn’t giving them a chance, a chance that CFP teams will almost always capitalize on. 

Gunner Stockton undeniably gave Georgia a spark when he replaced Carson Beck at halftime of the SEC Championship Game, but this isn’t Tua Tagovailoa coming in for Jalen Hurts in the 2018 National Championship Game. The general feeling is that Carson Beck will not be able to return at any point during the CFP, so Georgia is stuck with Stockton and will get an early look at next year’s potential starting QB. 

Stockton’s mobility was a valuable change of pace against Texas’s stout defense, but once the Longhorns adjusted, he was a net negative for the offense. Stockton averaged 2.93 yards per dropback and -0.38 EPA/play, a narrow improvement from Beck’s putrid first half, which included critical drops that Stockton wasn’t forced to deal with. 

With Beck, despite his turnover issues this season, Georgia is the likely favorite to win its third title in four years, but without him, Kirby Smart’s team enters the postseason with a massive question mark.