SEC Football has just five proven QBs and Alabama Football has one of them

Championships are not won by 'just-good' quarterbacks. College football's Game Manager era is history. Winning big now requires game-changers at QB. Fortunately, Alabama Football has a game-changer in Jalen Milroe. Maybe a few other SEC quarterbacks have some attributes greater than those of Jalen Milroe. Even so, Milroe has unsurpassed explosiveness.

Debates about quarterbacks are never-ending, but there should be consensus about the SEC's top five quarterbacks for the 2024 season. Brad Crawford of CBS recently ranked each projected SEC starter. Any 1 to 16 ranking is guaranteed to produce disputes. Rather than a ranking, let's say the five best SEC QBs are (in alphabetic order) Carson Beck, Brady Cook, Jaxson Dart, Quinn Ewers, and Jalen Milroe.

If all other things were equal (and among other key team components, they are not) it could be claimed the two teams that will meet in Atlanta will come from the group of Georgia, Missouri, Ole Miss, Texas, and Alabama.

Texas A&M and Florida fans can complain Conner Weigman and Graham Mertz are unfairly excluded from a grouping of the SEC's best. Both are solid enough to make a future NFL team, maybe even as a first-round pick. But the Aggies and the Gators do not surround their QBs with strong enough rosters to challenge for an SEC Championship.

What about the other nine projected SEC, QB starters? The 'other' group includes some potentially outstanding talent. The nine can be broken into two groups. Four are 'could be, should be, at some point will be, very good SEC quarterbacks'. Going into the season, their college experience is too limited to predict what they will achieve in 2024. The four are Brock Vandagriff (Kentucky), Nico Iamaleava (Tennessee's $8M man), Doug Nussmeier (LSU), and Jackson Arnold (Oklahoma). Pundits are predicting fast stardom for Iamaleava and Arnold. A better guess is that all four must work through learning curves in college football's toughest conference.

That leaves five guys Brad Crawford projects as starters. On his list are Diego Pavia (Vanderbilt), Lanorris Sellars (South Carolina), Taylen Green (Arkansas), Blake Shappen (Mississippi State) and Payton Thorne (Auburn). Pavia gets a nod as a QB starter who has won against an SEC team. He did last season when New Mexico State beat Auburn. Alabama football fans will remember Hugh Freeze said about the Auburn loss that he had been too busy recruiting to contribute to game-planning for the Aggies.