The Athletic surveyed roughly three dozen coaches, general managers, personnel directors and scouts, then ranked all 138 projected FBS starting quarterbacks.
They put Trinidad Chambliss first. He is eighth here.
They put Arch Manning seventh. He was 27th in passing yards last season. He is first here.
That is not a flaw in the scoring. It is the scoring working exactly as designed, and quarterback is where it shows most clearly.
The board
| # | Quarterback | School | NIL Index | Perf | Vis | Social | Fan | Expert |
| 1 | Arch Manning | Texas | 57.6 | 58 | 85 | 83 | 15 | 7 |
| 2 | Dante Moore | Oregon | 57.3 | 63 | 100 | 76 | 0 | 2 |
| 3 | Byrum Brown | Auburn | 56.3 | 58 | 62 | 68 | 40 | 19 |
| 4 | Marcel Reed | Texas A&M | 53.5 | 58 | 85 | 75 | 5 | 13 |
| 5 | Julian Sayin | Ohio State | 52.3 | 53 | 75 | 75 | 15 | 5 |
| 6 | Gunner Stockton | Georgia | 51.9 | 55 | 85 | 72 | 5 | 11 |
| 7 | Sam Leavitt | LSU | 51.0 | 58 | 63 | 72 | 15 | 8 |
| 8 | Trinidad Chambliss | Ole Miss | 50.8 | 57 | 75 | 73 | 5 | 1 |
| 9 | Darian Mensah | Miami | 47.6 | 60 | 66 | 67 | 0 | 4 |
| 10 | Josh Hoover | Indiana | 45.2 | 58 | 56 | 62 | 5 | 12 |
| 11 | Drew Mestemaker | Oklahoma State | 41.6 | 60 | 45 | 58 | 0 | 6 |
Expert rank is The Athletic’s 2026 College QB Tiers. The four components of the NIL Index are published in full:
| Component | Weight | What it measures |
| Performance | 35% | Stats, efficiency, team success |
| NIL Visibility | 20% | Estimated value, brands, exposure |
| Social Power | 20% | Followers, engagement, momentum |
| Fan Demand | 25% | RallyFuel searches, views, fuels |
The name that is not on it
The highest quarterback score we have ever recorded belongs to nobody on this board.
Fernando Mendoza finished 2025 at 61.5 — four points clear of Arch Manning, and the top figure in our Heisman NIL rankings, where he sits alongside Travis Hunter, Jayden Daniels and Caleb Williams. He threw for 3,535 yards and 41 touchdowns, won the Heisman, and beat Ohio State and Miami to give Indiana its first national championship.
He is not ranked here because he is in the NFL. He declared after his junior season, which is what a Heisman and a national title tend to produce, and it means everything below is a board of returning quarterbacks — the same population The Athletic’s list measures. Mendoza is not a rival to these eleven. He is the number they are playing toward, and the reminder that the highest score on this index has always belonged to someone who has since left.
Performance carries the heaviest weight and moves this board the least. Across these eleven quarterbacks it runs from 53 to 63, and ten points at a 35% weighting is worth 3.5 points of composite. Visibility runs from 45 to 100, and at a fifth of the weighting that range is worth 11.0. Fan Demand runs from 0 to 40, worth 10.0.
The component that measures throwing a football is the smallest lever on the board, by a factor of three.
1. Passing production barely moves the needle
Drew Mestemaker threw for 4,379 yards last season, more than anyone in college football. Sam Leavitt threw for 1,628. Their Performance components are 60 and 58.
Two points apart in one direction. Two thousand seven hundred yards apart in the other.
The whole Performance column spans ten points, top to bottom, across a group that includes the national leader in passing and quarterbacks who threw a third as much. Visibility spans fifty five.
That is why Mestemaker leads the country in passing and ranks eleventh of eleven. His Visibility of 45 is what a season at North Texas produces. Manning ranks seventh among scouts and first here, on a Visibility of 85 and a passing season that finished 27th.
2. Dante Moore has a perfect score in one column and nothing in another
| Component | Dante Moore |
| Performance | 63, highest here |
| NIL Visibility | 100 out of 100 |
| Social Power | 76 |
| Fan Demand | 0 |
That Visibility figure is the only perfect component we have recorded at any position. Arch Manning, the most recognised player in the sport, is at 85.
There is a straightforward explanation. Moore is a cover athlete on College Football 27, alongside Miami receiver Malachi Toney, who is second on our wide receiver board and the only other player we track carrying that title. A game cover is the single most efficient Visibility event available to a college player, and it is the one thing Manning does not have.
Moore ranks second among scouts and threw for 3,565 yards and 30 touchdowns at a 163.7 rating. Against Manning he leads on Performance by five points and on Visibility by fifteen, and trails on Social Power by seven. Add those together and he is 3.35 points of composite ahead.
He finishes second, four tenths behind, because Manning has a Fan Demand of 15 and Moore has nothing. One column, weighted at a quarter, is worth 3.75 points on its own and overturns a lead built across the other three.
3. The one column that is nearly empty across the board
Byrum Brown is ranked nineteenth by the expert panel. He scores 56.3, third, ahead of Reed, Sayin, Stockton, Leavitt, Chambliss and Mensah.
He does it on the lowest Visibility of anyone in the top eight, at 62.
What he has that they do not is a Fan Demand of 40, from a single fan. That column is a quarter of the composite, and nobody ranked above him by the scouts has more than 15 in it.
Fan Demand is the one input that comes from outside the sport. Seven of these eleven quarterbacks are sitting at 5 or below in it.
Three calls for 2026
Dante Moore finishes number one
Currently 57.3, second. Projected: above 62.
A perfect Visibility of 100 leaves nothing to fix in the component that separates this board, and the expert panel already ranks him second in the country. The football case and the media case are both settled.
What is not settled is the only column he is empty in, and it is the one that decided second place. Four tenths of a point stand between him and the top, against a Fan Demand column worth ten times that.
Drew Mestemaker is the most underrated quarterback in college football
Currently 41.6, eleventh. Projected: above 48.
He led all of college football in passing yards with 4,379 and sits last on this board. His Performance component of 60 ties Darian Mensah for second here, behind only Moore’s 63. The problem is a Visibility of 45, the lowest of any returning quarterback we track.
Oklahoma State hired his North Texas head coach and brought most of the offense with him, Wyatt Young included. Mestemaker arrives in the Big 12 throwing to receivers he already knows, in front of an audience that has never seen him.
Trinidad Chambliss closes on the top three
Currently 50.8, eighth. Projected: above 55.
The panel of coaches and scouts ranks him the best quarterback in the country. The index has him eighth. Nothing in his football profile explains the difference: his Visibility of 75 and Social Power of 73 are already strong, better than Brown’s in both columns.
What separates him from third place is a Fan Demand of 5 against Brown’s 40. Ole Miss opens with real national exposure, and the component holding him back has nothing to do with what happens on a field.
We will grade all three in December.
A note on how these move
Five of these quarterbacks have shifted by one to two points in a matter of days, and the movement is almost entirely in Visibility rather than Performance. Gunner Stockton gained ten points of Visibility. So did Josh Hoover.
Treat this board as a snapshot. Production changes slowly. Attention does not.
Learn More About the NIL Landscape
Name, Image and Likeness now shapes college football as much as recruiting or the portal does, and this board is one way of seeing how. The component that measures passing is worth 3.5 points of separation here. The two that measure audience and engagement are worth 11.0 and 10.0.
That second one is a quarter of the score, and on this board it is nearly empty. Seven of these eleven quarterbacks sit at 5 or below in it. Byrum Brown is third overall on the lowest Visibility in the top eight, ahead of the quarterback the scouts rank first in the country.
Fan Demand is the one component that comes from outside the sport. Fueling an athlete is a purchase of conditional NIL engagement rights, not a donation — the terms and refund conditions are posted at checkout.
👉 Explore the Athletes on RallyFuel. Compare scores component by component and see what the board looks like from the inside.
