The SEC has a familiar kind of problem this season: the conference is chasing another Heisman winner, and the list of names with a real shot is loaded with quarterbacks who can beat you in more than one way.
At the top of the board sits Trinidad Chambliss, the Ole Miss quarterback who turned a backup role and a Division II transfer label into a finish that got him 8th in the 2025 Heisman vote. Chambliss threw for 3,937 yards and 22 touchdowns while adding 537 rushing yards and 8 scores, then saved some of his sharpest work for the postseason.
In Ole Miss’s 3 CFP games, he piled up 921 passing yards and 6 total touchdowns. With Kewan Lacy back and a top 25 matchup waiting in Week 1, Chambliss is the SEC name most likely to dominate the Monday conversation.
He’s in an explosive offense, and with a full season ahead, his numbers could climb even higher than they did last year.
Right behind him is Arch Manning, who enters the year just behind Notre Dame’s C.J. Carr in the broader Heisman picture.
Manning opened last season as the preseason favorite, but Texas never fully got where it wanted to go, and his play was part of the issue. There were rough patches that stood out, including an 11-for-25, 114-yard outing against San Jose State in Game 3 and a 12-for-27, 132-yard performance against Kentucky.
Some of the throws were so off that they looked like a quarterback fighting the yips.
Still, the late-season version of Manning gave Texas plenty to hang onto. Once November arrived, he put up 11 touchdowns against just one interception, threw for 1,368 yards and completed 62% of his passes.
He also ran for 200 yards and 4 touchdowns during that stretch. When he’s rolling, the classic QB1 traits are still all there.
If that version carries into 2026 and Texas avoids another major stumble, Manning can absolutely climb back into the center of the race.
Gunner Stockton deserves more attention than he’s getting. The Georgia quarterback finished 7th in Heisman voting last season after spending 2 years on the bench, then putting together a steady, productive year: 2,894 passing yards, 24 touchdowns and only 5 interceptions.
He never threw more than one pick in a game, and he added 462 rushing yards and 10 touchdowns on the ground. Stockton also delivered in the biggest moments, accounting for 3 scores in Georgia’s SEC title win over Alabama and its CFP loss to Ole Miss.
With the No. 3 Bulldogs expected to keep winning, Stockton has a path to stay in the hunt if he can add a little more flash to the production.
John Mateer is another quarterback whose upside is obvious if the health and turnovers cooperate. He looked like a Heisman favorite when Oklahoma started 2025 with a 5-0 run, but injuries changed the story.
After that fast start, he finished with 8 touchdown passes and 8 interceptions, and his overall 14-to-11 TD/INT line won’t play in a Heisman push. Even so, the dual-threat ability remains a big part of the case: he ran for 431 yards and 8 touchdowns in that hot start, and also had 190 rushing yards and 5 scores.
If the No. 10 Sooners can keep him upright and he cleans up the giveaways, he can get back into the race quickly.
Marcel Reed rounds out the top five, and he’s not someone to overlook just because Texas A&M faded late. For most of 2025, Reed and the Aggies were quietly working their way into Heisman and CFP sleeper territory.
Then the final two games went sideways. Reed didn’t throw a touchdown pass in those games and was picked off four times, while A&M suffered its first two losses, one at Texas and one against Miami in the CFP.
Even with that finish, Reed’s overall season still carries real weight. The sophomore passed for 3,169 yards and 25 touchdowns and added 493 rushing yards and 6 scores.
The No. 8 Aggies should remain in the SEC mix, which won’t hurt his case, even if it isn’t a requirement.
Week 1 against Missouri State won’t tell us much, but Reed has already shown enough to stay on the radar.
Just outside the group, LaNorris Sellers probably won’t have a strong enough team around him at South Carolina. Sam Leavitt is headed into what the source described as the biggest mess of chaos in college football because of LSU’s situation. And Keelon Russell at Alabama needs to at least play a full game before he can really enter the conversation.
In Other News...
Louisville Fans Just Landed In A College Football Debate Nobody Saw Coming
A new study of thousands of Reddit posts has thrown a fresh, and admittedly unusual, lens on college football fan behavior by ranking fanbases on vulgarity. Mississippi State came out on top with a perfect Vulgarity Score of 10.00, Arkansas finished just behind, and Louisville showed up third nationally in the analysis, giving the Cardinals a surprising spot near the top of a list few schools would be eager to lead.
The numbers also offered a broader snapshot of how the sports online tone varies by conference, with the Big 12 posting a slightly higher average vulgarity score than the SEC. At the other end of the spectrum, Sacramento State fans were judged the least vulgar in the study, a reminder that internet chatter can produce some strange little pecking orders, even when it is filtered through college football rivalries. [Read more 🡒]
Ole Miss Faces A Bigger Talent Test Than Louisville In Week 1
The opening-week matchup with Louisville is being framed as more than a simple early test for Ole Miss, because the talent gap in college football has become one of the clearest predictors of who can actually finish the season in the national title conversation. A look at championship teams from 2013 through 2025 shows the same pattern again and again: the programs that win it all usually sit near the top of the recruiting-composite mountain, with only rare outliers breaking through.
For Ole Miss, the deeper point is what those rankings reveal about the roster it is building now, especially when measured against the Cardinals' own collection of high school signees and transfer additions. The Rebels have invested heavily in blue-chip talent of their own, but the Week 1 spotlight is less about who starts fast and more about whether this roster has enough top-end depth to handle the kind of talent test that usually separates a good September from a real playoff chase. [Read more 🡒]
Tennessee Has A Real Chance In One SEC Recruiting Battle
The early recruiting picture for Lee Steele is already crowded, and that is no surprise for a 2028 three-star tight end from Orange Beach, Ala. He is looking at eight SEC programs, including Ole Miss, and the pitch is about more than logo strength at this stage. Steele has said he is weighing the people in each program, the success of the current coach and, maybe most importantly, how he would fit into the offense.
For the Rebels, that means the tight end plan matters as much as the SEC brand. Steele sees himself as a hybrid option who can line up both inside and outside the box, so he has been paying close attention to how each school uses the position. Tennessee is in that mix, along with Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Kentucky, LSU and Vanderbilt, and the way each staff deploys tight ends could end up making this one of the more interesting recruiting battles to follow. [Read more 🡒]