Senior seasons revealing deep 2023 quarterback class

After the most recent update to the 2023 On300 rankings, two quarterbacks occupy the top two spots with one more ranking set to be released in January.

Five-Star Plus+ passer and Texas commit Arch Manning remains the No. 1 player in the cycle, with Tennessee QB commit Nico Iamaleava making his case to be the top overall prospect in the country. The duo presents a challenging evaluation case, especially given that Manning has not been a regular on the camp circuit, and Iamaleava has a much smaller sample size of in-game action than most high school quarterbacks at this point.

As the end of the 2023 cycle nears, those two have made the strongest cases for being the country’s top overall prospect and quarterback, but they aren’t alone. Five-Star Plus+ USC commit Malachi Nelson has been a known commodity among top recruits for most of his high school career, while new five-star Jackson Arnold has burst onto the scene with a remarkable senior season at Denton (Texas) Guyer. The quarterback class a whole, which features 18 passers ranked in the On300, is one of the most talent-rich in recent memory.

“Looking at the group, I’d expect for there to be a bunch of multi-year starters at the college level come from this class,” On3 Director of Scouting and Rankings Charles Power said. “I can’t recall feeling as good about the No. 15, No. 16, No. 17-ranked quarterbacks in a cycle as we do this year.”

Final high school season is a pivotal evaluation point

One of the more unique aspects of this cycle, Power adds, is that there isn’t a clear No. 1 passer at this point in the cycle. In 2021, now-USC star and Heisman favorite Caleb Williams was the top quarterback for the entirety of his senior campaign. In 2020, the same was the case with Alabama star and last year’s Heisman winner, Bryce Young.

Projecting which quarterbacks will excel to the highest levels of college football is an inexact science, but there’s likely no more informative data point than the senior season.

“You’re talking hundreds of pass attempts over a 10-plus game season with a high school team you’ve been practicing with in an offense you’re familiar with,” Power said. “It really allows the most ideal situation to see what a quarterback can do in the most applicable setting: 11-on-11 contact football on Friday nights.”

In the case of Manning, who has been at the center of heavy social media debate and vitriol since every major recruiting service named him the nation’s No. 1 prospect as a junior, he kept the top spot — for now — because of near-flawless senior season. He’s completed close to 63 percent of his passes for 2,226 yards (10.7 yards per attempt) for 34 touchdowns with zero interceptions, while leading New Orleans (La.) Isidore Newman to a 8-2 record thus far.

Likewise, Arnold has showcased not only his arm strength and toughness, but also the ability to move in and out of the pocket and make throws off his platform down the field. And he’s doing it in maybe the toughest classification of high school football in the country.

“He’s just having just a phenomenal senior season when you look at his production,” Power said. “He’s completing close to 70 percent of his passes at 10.4 yards per attempt. He has 45 total touchdowns to three interceptions, and he’s doing it in really big games. We knew the arm talent coming in, as well as his overall toughness and competitiveness. But he’s taken his game to another level and continued to improve, which is what you want to see.”

With Iamaleava, his struggles this fall at Downey (Calif.) Warren were apparent, but he has more physical upside than any other quarterback in the class. It also has to be taken into account that he transferred out of Warren in March to play at Long Beach Poly, then opted to return to Warren in July, meaning he missed almost an entire offseason working with his high school team. He shined at Overtime’s OT7 event, and the skills he showed there were on display in flashes during the fall.

Depth from top to bottom in the On300

Arnold, Iamaleava and Manning are among the most fiercely debated names this cycle, but the bigger storyline with this group is overall depth. Compared to this time a year ago with the 2022 cycle — when there were 11 quarterbacks ranked among the top 200 prospects — there are 16 this year, with recent Notre Dame commit Kenny Minchey sitting just outside that range at No. 204.

The group as a whole, Power says, has continued to improve and rise up in each rankings update, a sign that their growth is an upward trend and not pleateuing in their final high school season.

“We put a lot of emphasis on the senior season. And when you look at top draft picks at the position, there is a very strong correlation between how a quarterback plays as a senior in high school and how they ultimately look in college and their odds of becoming a top NFL draft pick. There’s very few outliers on that front if you dig into the numbers. The senior season is the biggest driver of our late rankings movement and informs our overall philosophy on ranking quarterbacks.”

Even then, projecting to the NFL level is monumentally difficult task. Patrick Mahomes was a three-star prospect with only a handful of Power Five offers and a lot of skepticism coming out of Texas Tech. Josh Allen went to a California junior college before ending up in the Mountain West Conference at Wyoming. Justin Herbert, though he ultimately signed with Oregon, didn’t receive a Power Five scholarship offer until his senior year. For every Trevor Lawrence or Matthew Stafford — NFL QBs who were considered can’t-miss high school prospects — there are equally as many who flew under the radars of college programs and recruiting services.

While the likes of Manning, Iamaleava, Nelson, Arnold and Dante Moore will receive the most attention at this level and the next, Power says there are plenty of other names who have put on tape during the senior seasons exactly the kind of success that will translate well to the next level — and potentially beyond. Among them: Cincinnati four-star commit Brady Drogosh, Washington pledge Lincoln Kienholz and Washington State verbal Sam Leavitt. Each were among the biggest risers in this rankings update.

Those names might not draw much response now, but don’t be surprised at all if those names are high on draft boards three to four years from now.

“I would not be shocked if several of the top quarterbacks — and maybe the top one — in this cycle is not a five-star or even a top-100 prospect, given the number of blue-chip guys we’ve identified at the position,” Power said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we look up in a few years, and the top guys from the 2023 cycle are the ones who maybe didn’t have as much recruiting attention from big programs or weren’t as high in the rankings.”