If you’ve been following college football over the past year or so, you might have noticed something unusual: there have been very few elite quarterbacks. Almost every quarterback that fans have been promised great things from – DJ Lagway, Carson Beck, Shedeur Sanders, Arch Manning, Drew Allar, Quinn Ewers, etc – have all underperformed. Several that began to perform well early this season – LaNorris Sellers, Cade Klubnik, and Garrett Nussmeier, to name a few – have since fallen off and played at a subpar level. In 2025, only one quarterback was even drafted in the first round, and there were none in realistic Heisman-winner conversation. Certainly, the quarterbacks who led recent national championship teams – The Georgia quarterback room in 2022 and 2023, JJ McCarthy for Michigan in 2024, and Will Howard for Ohio State in 2025 – were not at all elite quarterbacks or in any sort of Heisman or Davey O’Brien award conversation.
Why is this?

First, the quarterback position has never been more difficult. With the transfer portal constantly reshaping rosters – and this process being catalyzed by the recent legalization of NIL for college athletes – QBs are often forced to produce immediately or lose their jobs. That absolutely stunts development in college quarterbacks, who historically may have had the opportunity to sit behind and learn from veteran quarterbacks for upwards of 2 or 3 seasons.

You can’t put all the blame on their environments, though, as quarterbacks and college football players in general have become greedier. With the combination of NIL and the transfer portal, players have the power to control their destiny at any time. If they are discontent with the money they are making or the playing time they are getting, they can easily switch to a school that “promises” them better benefits. Yet, like Icarus, this greed has resulted in demise. Take Nico Iamalaeva, for example. He was a highly touted 5 star recruit out of high school and committed to Tennessee. His NIL package was worth up to $8 million and got the starting gig as a redshirt freshman. He was above average in 2024, but nothing extraordinary, definitely not $8 million good. Yet this offseason, he demanded an increase in his NIL wage from the Volunteers. Obviously, they declined as he was already taking up a large portion of their $20.5 million NIL cap. So he left to transfer to UCLA, where he earns an annual $1.2 million (half of his yearly earnings at Tennessee) – he transferred to a much worse team, looking for more money, only to ironically cut his earnings in half. They have also started the season 0-3 and he has been playing below average with a QBR of 50.7, ranking him 83rd out of 135 FBS quarterbacks.

Teams have shifted priorities, too. As mentioned before, many recent championship-caliber teams have relied more on roster depth, dominant offensive lines, and suffocating defenses rather than a Heisman-winning quarterback. Although absent spectacular QB play, this strategy has proven to be successful for several college programs, which has, in turn, made developing a superstar quarterback less of a priority for coaching and management staff. And the rise of elite defenses certainly plays a role. College defenses have caught up to the spread-heavy offensive strategies that dominated the 2010s and created schemes designed to compromise quarterbacks. Until they find a solution for this, we may continue to see a significant drop in dominant college offenses.

Expectations may also be a contributing factor to increasingly poor college QB play. Likely due to the successes of MVP winners Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen (who were considered project quarterbacks coming out of college), NFL teams have begun to draft quarterbacks with elite physical and athletic traits over quarterbacks with illustrious college careers. Take the 4th overall pick in the 2023 NFL draft, Anthony Richardson, for example: he started 10 total games in college, but his outstanding frame and combine performance were enough for him to be drafted incredibly early – now he’s been benched in a lackluster QB room in Indianapolis. When reality doesn’t match the hype for a prospect, the disappointment is much greater – potentially creating or exacerbating the image of lacking college quarterback talent.

The result is a strange era for football: quarterbacks, of course, remain the most important position on the field, but era-defining QBs have become increasingly rare. College football may remain defined by the aforementioned offensive lines, defenses, and roster depth that programs now prioritize – that is, until the next generational prospects emerge.