2025-Q1 Rankings Report: QBs
Today, VP discusses 67 QBs for the upcoming 2025 college football season.
I imagine that right now, you're feeling a bit like Alice. Tumbling down the rabbit hole?
- Morpheus, The Matrix
Hello to all the pigs worldwide. Welcome in, and please make yourself comfortable. Some of you may recall that around this time last year I released a set of Q1 rankings (read: VP’s way too early rankings). This document provided the foundation for all my subsequent rankings in 2024. As usual, explanations were included for each entry.
This time I’m going one position at a time, in an attempt to dedicate more time and focus onto each group. Today, as the title reads, we have QBs. I’m using five point passing TD scoring as a middle ground between four and six point passing TD formats, which are the most popular CFF scoring formats.
As is always the case with early rankings, a lot (but not necessarily as much as you would think) will change over the course of the offseason. Names may be added, or subtracted, for example. There are 67 players in this iteration. The primary aim of these rankings is standard formats (choose starters), not bestball.
Blake Horvath (Navy) — This may surprise you, but Horvath is the highest scoring returning QB who will be playing for the same team in 2025 in four point passing TD formats, and second only behind Klubnik in five point+ passing TD formats. He averaged 28.23 PPG a year ago, and his value increases in formats with discrepancies between the scoring of passing vs. rushing TDs. Obviously, as an option QB his primary selling point is the rushing involved with his offence. He does score passing TDs too. He does it at just a high enough rate to make him a ‘dual threat QB’ and not just a RB at QB. Horvath and the Mids have virtually the exact same charmin soft schedule this year that they did a year ago, so that’s good. However, what I will say is that if Horvath holds this spot throughout this offseason, it’s certainly the weakest QB1 in my rankings that I can remember.
Cade Klubnik (Clemson) — Klubnik took a huge step forward as a second year starter in 2024, and with a full fleet of returning WRs from a year ago, the arrow appears to be pointing upwards on this passing offence. What’s more, Klubnik offers value on the ground as well, scoring seven times and rushing for 463 yards on 119 carries last season. In non-four point passing TD formats, Klubnik is the highest scoring returning QB who will be playing for the same team in 2025.
Parker Navarro (Ohio) — The name of the game in CFF for QBs is to either find a dual threat QB, or a good passer in an air raid offence. Navarro fits the former category, finishing 2024 with six(!!) games over 100 yards rushing. That’s insane. As with all MAC players, the hardest part is holding onto them through the mud in September to get the gold in October. As a refresher, Ohio plays Ohio State, WVU and Rutgers as P4 OOC opponents. Yikes.
Colton Joseph (ODU) — Joseph isn’t quite the rusher Navarro is, but he’s still pretty good. He finished 2024 with 11 scores and 647 yards on 114 rush attempts. A long time ago I wrote a piece on ODU’s incoming staff in 2023; that staff brought a great pedigree from the FCS, in particular in the passing production of the offence where three WRs went over 1000 yards in 2022. That obviously hasn’t carried over into the FBS, but the QB play seems to be getting there via Joseph. He averaged nearly 26 PPG last year as a first year starter so if he just repeats what he did he’ll justify the ranking, but year two could also provide a bump à la 2024 Klubnik.
Micah Alejado (Hawaii) — What a year for the G5 this is shaping up to be. In an era with NIL and the transfer portal, you’d think that the G5 ranks would be thinning down to nonexistence for CFF relevancy, but the opposite is true for 2025. At least, at the QB position. The Run-N-Shoot offence that Hawaii has been trying to bring back has been a failed experiment thus far, but as the head coach rightfully pointed out after Alejado’s first start, when you have the right QB, the sky is the limit in this system. That’s exactly what CFF players want to hear. The one thing I would caution drafters with is that Alejado’s one and only start was vs. a poor New Mexico team. It was a great game, but even NM is bad defensively by MWC standards. Hawaii has a relatively friendly OOC schedule, playing Arizona and Stanford as their only two P4 opponents.