Entering the 2025 season, LSU‘s Garrett Nussmeier and Texas‘ Arch Manning were among the preseason favorites to not only win the Heisman Trophy but also potentially become the No. 1 overall pick in the upcoming 2026 NFL Draft. Ten weeks later and neither is anywhere to be found on most mock drafts.

In their place are a pair of Big Ten quarterbacks after Oregon‘s Dante Moore and Indiana‘s Fernando Mendoza emerged as both Heisman Trophy frontrunners and midseason leaders to be among the first quarterbacks off the board in next April’s NFL Draft. In fact, ESPN guru Mel Kiper Jr. has Moore as his top overall prospect in his latest Big Board Top 25 released Thursday, with Mendoza at No. 3 overall.

Alabama junior QB Ty Simpson climbed to No. 5 on Kiper’s latest Big Board, but after that, the highest-ranked SEC quarterback in Kiper’s Top 25 is South Carolina‘s LaNorris Sellers at No. 21. Suffice it to say, there’s not a lot of love for draft-eligible SEC QBs at the moment, and at least one college football pundit is ready to pour water on the league having any draft-eligible quarterbacks worthy of a Top 10 pick.

During a Friday appearance on The Herd with Colin Cowherd, former Ohio State coach-turned-FOX Sports analyst Urban Meyer cited a recent conversation with former ESPN draft analyst Todd McShay to dunk on the SEC’s current quarterback class.

“Todd McShay is a guy that I respect, as well as GMs, his opinions. Those quarterbacks in the SEC, I’m not sure – and neither is Todd – are those the first-round (type of) guys that you take and say, ‘You’re my quarterback and I’m going to rest my career on it,’” Meyer told Cowherd, who immediately reinforced Meyer’s sentiment. “I agreed with Todd (when) he said most of those guys should get one more year (in college) before going to the NFL.”

That particular advice might not work for Nussmeier and other senior QBs such as Tennessee‘s Joey Aguilar, Arkansas‘ Taylen Green and Vanderbilt‘s Diego Pavia, but for others, it might already be a foregone conclusion. Manning, who has struggled in his first season as Texas’ starter, has long been expected to return for another season in Austin. Meanwhile, for junior QBs like Simpson, Oklahoma‘s John Mateer and Georgia‘s Gunner Stockton — who are all also in their first seasons as their team’s QB1 — another year in college might prove quite beneficial to their future NFL career.

At least that’s the consensus among Meyer, McShay and Cowherd.