Best college football quarterback in every Power 5 conference for 2023
By John Buhler
Let’s take a look at the best college football quarterback in each Power 5 conference.
These five quarterbacks in the Power 5 are a cut above the rest.
Although some college football conferences are better than others, each P5 league is bound to have a signal-caller or two who will make you turn your head and say “Wow!” like Owen Wilson. We are still so incredibly far out, but two of these quarterbacks should turn pro after next season because they feel like sure-fire locks to go top five. Bad NFL teams need quarterbacks on the reg.
So with that in mind, let’s see what every Power 5 conference has to offer as its main course.
Table of Contents
- ACC: A competitive quarterback league, but only this guy is winning the Heisman.
- Big Ten: The quarterback on the best team in the Big Ten should get to New York, too.
- Big 12: This blue-blood cannot be down for that long because of this transfer southpaw.
- Pac-12: Of course, the best-quarterbacked conference would have the best quarterback.
- SEC: Well, this is splendid… Dare I say it, this former blue-chipper is the best we got, y’all.
College football: Best starting quarterback in every Power 5 conference
ACC: North Carolina’s Drake Maye should be a top-five pick in the 2024 NFL Draft
The ACC may be the weakest Power 5 conference top to bottom, but it does offer a wide array of quality quarterbacks. Although it lost Devin Leary and Sam Hartman in the transfer portal to Kentucky and Notre Dame respectively, the top end of ACC quarterback play remains fairly stellar. While Cade Klubnik looks promising and Jordan Travis is legit, this is Drake Maye’s conference now.
The North Carolina starter is the primary reason why the Tar Heels can win the ACC this season and make the College Football Playoff for the first time in the final four-team format. He may hail from UNC’s first family of athletics, but his future so bright and far beyond Chapel Hill. Should he play up to his potential, he could be the Tar Heels’ first Heisman winner, even with a 9-3 record.
Simply put, we have not seen a quarterback play in North Carolina that looks like a future NFL superstar since Philip Rivers was slinging it oddly for NC State in the early 2000s. Not even Russell Wilson looked like this. And for those who go, “What about Mitch Trubisky?”, you can just take that nonsense and throw it as far as your wingspan, the same distance he averages yards per attempt.
Maye should quarterback a 10-win team, be a Heisman finalist and be a top-five pick leaving UNC.