College football’s 2026 season is already lined up with a handful of quarterbacks and receivers who could push their programs in completely different directions. The upside is obvious.
So is the risk. These are the kinds of players who can make a season look brilliant - or unravel it in a hurry.
LaNorris Sellers sits near the top of that list at South Carolina, where he returns after nearly testing the transfer portal. He’s ranked No. 3 among Mel Kiper’s top 10 quarterback prospects for the 2026 NFL Draft, and his production already tells you why: 5,057 passing yards, 33 touchdowns and 15 interceptions, plus 995 rushing yards and 13 more scores over three seasons. Now he’s dealing with his third offensive coordinator in three years, with Kendal Briles arriving from TCU after Mike Shula was fired with three games left in a 4-8 season.
The evaluation on Sellers is all over the map, which is what makes him so fascinating. An anonymous SEC defensive coordinator told ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg that Sellers “really struggles to process in the middle of a game” and “when you move him around or you move things around on him, he just really struggles.” That same coach said if Briles can simplify the offense, “the kid could be scary.”
Briles has made it clear he’s not just tweaking the old system. He said he hadn’t watched any of Sellers’ 2025 film before taking the job, choosing to build from scratch. He also said he doesn’t expect to throw it 35 times a game the way he did at TCU, pointing to Sellers’ running ability as a reason to lean more on called runs than his previous quarterback did.
At Baylor, Sawyer Robertson’s departure opened the door for Sawyer Robertson’s former backup? No - the player now trying to steady the Bears is Sawyer Robertson’s replacement in spirit, not name, and his path has its own weight.
DJ Lagway completed 63.2% of his passes for 2,264 yards, 16 touchdowns and 14 interceptions last season at Florida before entering the transfer portal and heading to Texas. The move carries family history too: his father, Derek, played running back at Baylor from 1997 to 2001.
Lagway said Baylor “checked every box” during his search, and part of that was how the Bears used departed quarterback Sawyer Robertson, who threw for 3,600 yards and 31 touchdowns. Offensive coordinator Jake Spavital said Lagway can slip back into Florida habits instead of trusting Baylor’s spread system, and he pointed to confidence as the biggest thing Lagway has to develop. Spavital also said a confident Lagway “gives life to this offense” and “elevates everybody around him.”
The connection piece matters too. Lagway paid for 15 teammates to join him on a spring break trip to Miami, and head coach Dave Aranda said Lagway connects with teammates better than any player he has coached.
At UCLA, Nico Iamaleava is stepping into a very different kind of reset. He passed for 1,928 yards with 13 touchdowns and seven interceptions in his first season there after transferring from Tennessee, and he chose to return for 2026 rather than enter the NFL Draft. Now he’s working under new head coach Bob Chesney, who rebuilt UCLA’s roster around dozens of transfers from his previous stop at James Madison.
Chesney said on The Jim Rome Show that “everybody looks to him as a leader, and I think he needs to understand that.” After UCLA’s first fall scrimmage, he also pointed to a specific area for growth, saying Iamaleava needs to “continue to connect with the receivers” while building chemistry with an almost entirely new receiving group.
That’s the challenge in full: Iamaleava has to learn an offense he’s still getting comfortable with while also learning a room full of pass-catchers whose backgrounds are new to him. Chesney’s roster construction gives the Bruins a built-in layer of familiarity among many of the transfers, but not for Iamaleava, who is starting from zero with most of them.
Clemson’s competition at quarterback turned into one of the more revealing camp battles in the country. Christopher Vizzina has completed 64 of 105 passes for 596 yards, four touchdowns and one interception in 14 career games, including a start against SMU in which he threw for 317 yards and three touchdowns.
That was the fifth-most passing yards by a Clemson quarterback making his debut since 1953. He also beat out five-star freshman Tait Reynolds for the job.
Dabo Swinney said, “There was a time” he thought Reynolds might win the competition before Vizzina pulled away in fall camp. Swinney added that Vizzina “has done everything he needs to do at this point to win the job,” but also said, “he also has a lot to prove.
He's got the pole position. He just has to finish the race.”
Vizzina’s own message is simpler: tunnel vision, with the reminder that “nobody is coming to save you.”
The challenge starts immediately. Clemson opens at LSU and begins the year unranked in the AP poll for the first time since 2011, though the Tigers received more votes than any other unranked team.
Then there’s Alabama receiver Germie Bernard Coleman-Williams, whose 2025 season was a step backward on the stat sheet but whose offseason has been anything but quiet. His drop rate was the highest among qualified FBS receivers last season, and his production fell from 865 yards and eight touchdowns as a freshman to 689 yards and four touchdowns as a sophomore.
Now he’s operating with a new identity in more ways than one. He added his mother’s maiden name, Coleman, to his jersey, changed from No. 2 to No. 1, got married during the offseason and stayed in Tuscaloosa to train instead of going back home to Mobile. He’s also ditching gloves in games after practicing without them his whole career.
“I actually practiced with no gloves pretty much my whole life,” he said. “So, I mean, since I've been a receiver, I've been practicing with no gloves.”
Asked why he was making the switch for games, he said, “Nothing, just playing football. I mean, a glove or without a glove, it doesn't really matter.”
An Alabama staffer told CBS Sports he “had a great spring,” and the outlet’s post-spring mock draft projects him as a late first-round pick.
Louisville’s quarterback picture is built around another transfer, Miller Kienholz, who arrives after appearing in just nine games across three seasons at Ohio State. He completed 21 of 36 passes for 250 yards and one touchdown there, while adding 68 rushing yards and two scores, and he never won the Buckeyes’ starting job despite drawing praise in spring practices over his final two seasons.
Jeff Brohm said at ACC Media Days that Louisville went after Kienholz because “you look for guys that are hungry first” and pointed to his high school pedigree and the tape. Brian Brohm said Kienholz’s mobility will let Louisville “stretch the defense laterally” in ways the offense hasn’t shown before. After the Cardinals’ first fall scrimmage, Jeff Brohm said, “I thought Lincoln had a good day, and it was good because he's had a good camp, and I think he's getting a better grasp.”
Kienholz has been just as blunt about his own expectations. “I'm super hard on myself.
I want to be perfect. So if I miss a throw, I'm gonna go back and see why.”
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