Every team on this list broke in a specific, identifiable way last year. These are the ten players who might be the reason it doesn't happen again.

There is a lazy version of this list, and it goes like this: here are ten talented players who are underrated. It doesn't say anything, because "underrated" isn't a claim anybody can check.

So here's a stricter test. For each of these ten teams, something concrete went wrong in 2025 — a position that cratered, a quarterback room that never stabilized, an offense that couldn't produce when it mattered. And in each case, there is one player whose presence in 2026 is the specific answer to that specific problem. If he's what his team thinks he is, the season changes shape. If he isn't, the problem probably hasn't gone anywhere.

That's a bet you can grade in November.

1. Kamario Taylor, QB, Mississippi State

What broke: Blake Shapen ran out of eligibility, and Mississippi State kept losing games by inches.

Kamario Taylor is the most interesting player in the SEC that casual fans haven't watched yet. As a true freshman, he threw for 629 yards and five touchdowns against a single interception while rushing for 458 yards and eight more scores, appearing in eleven games and starting two. One of those starts was the Egg Bowl, where he put 173 rushing yards on Ole Miss.

He is the highest-rated quarterback recruit in program history, he's from Macon — about half an hour from campus — and he arrives at Jeff Lebby's third season as the unquestioned starter, with no competition behind him worth calling a competition.

The framing that matters came from receiver Anthony Evans III, who pointed to three 2025 games decided by one play as the thing the locker room won't stop talking about.

Mississippi State doesn't need a miracle. It needs to convert coin flips. A dual-threat quarterback who can extend drives with his legs is precisely how a team stops losing by three.

The catch: Taylor was carted off in the bowl game against Wake Forest with a lower-leg injury and had an ankle procedure six days later.

2. Austin Simmons, QB, Missouri

What broke: Everything at quarterback. Beau Pribula faded in SEC play, got hurt against Vanderbilt, and left. A true freshman started the Gator Bowl loss.

Austin Simmons won the Ole Miss job in 2025, then hurt his ankle in Week 2 against Kentucky — and Trinidad Chambliss took the position and never gave it back, riding it to a Heisman finish and a playoff semifinal. Simmons has just 1,026 career passing yards across seventeen games. That is the entire body of evidence.

What's notable is Missouri's conviction. Eli Drinkwitz named him the starter immediately after spring, which is not how Drinkwitz usually handles quarterback decisions. Simmons beat out Matt Zollers, UConn transfer Nick Evers and freshman Gavin Sidwar to get there. Behind him is Ahmad Hardy, who led the SEC with 1,649 rushing yards. Missouri opened 25th in the Coaches Poll. If Simmons is even competent, that ranking may be too low.

The wrinkle: He's left-handed, which made right tackle an unexpected priority after Missouri lost All-SEC lineman Keagen Trost. Watch the blind side.

3. Sam Leavitt, QB, LSU

What broke: LSU's quarterback play was mediocre, the coaching staff turned over, and Lane Kiffin arrived from Ole Miss under a cloud of resentment.

Sam Leavitt was rated the top player in the transfer portal — a distinction that opened up only after Brendan Sorsby's eligibility collapsed. He went 16–4 as a starter under Kenny Dillingham at Arizona State and led the Sun Devils to a Big 12 title and a playoff berth in 2024.

He is also coming back from a Lisfranc injury suffered last September, which is not a small thing for a quarterback whose value is tied to improvisation. Kiffin's offensive track record is the least uncertain variable in Baton Rouge. Everything else — the health, the fit, the circus surrounding the hire — is genuinely unknown. LSU opened 13th. It may have a wider range of plausible finishes than any team in the top fifteen.

4. Aidan Chiles, QB, Northwestern

What broke: Northwestern's passing offense was among the four worst in the country by yards per game.

Aidan Chiles started twenty games across two seasons at Michigan State, throwing for 4,116 career yards with 27 touchdowns and 14 interceptions. He was benched midway through 2025 after a loss to Michigan and then missed the rest of the year with a foot injury. He is not arriving in Evanston as a finished product; he's arriving as a repair job.

The reason to care is who's holding the tools.

Northwestern hired Chip Kelly as offensive coordinator in December — the same Chip Kelly who coordinated Ohio State's national championship offense in 2024 before a short, unhappy stint with the Raiders. Kelly has spent his career turning athletic quarterbacks into functional ones. Chiles has a legitimate arm and real speed. What he's lacked is feel: reading complex defenses, handling pressure, protecting the ball. Those are coachable, and Kelly is the coach.

The stakes: Northwestern went 7–6 last year and opens its new $862 million Ryan Field against Penn State on Oct. 2. It would like to be good by then.

5. Cam Coleman, WR, Texas

What broke: Texas caught nothing. The Longhorns ranked 80th nationally in drop percentage, Arch Manning completed 50 percent or fewer of his passes in three separate games, and the team missed the playoff. Then Texas lost roughly a third of its receiving production to the portal.

Enter Cam Coleman. Coleman was the No. 2 player available and one of only six five-star transfers in the cycle. He led Auburn with 56 catches for 708 yards last season despite quarterback play that regularly sailed passes over his head, after posting 598 yards and eight touchdowns as a true freshman. He's 6-foot-3 and spent the offseason adding the physicality he lacked.

This is the cleanest cause-and-effect pairing on the list. Texas had a receiver problem. Texas signed the best receiver available. Coleman now lines up opposite Ryan Wingo, with Emmett Mosley V inside. Sometimes the answer really is that simple.

6. Drew Mestemaker, QB, Oklahoma State

What broke: The end of the Mike Gundy era, comprehensively.

Drew Mestemaker threw for 4,379 yards and 34 touchdowns as a redshirt freshman at North Texas and followed head coach Eric Morris to Stillwater, with Oklahoma State fending off interest from a stack of top-25 programs to keep him.

The backstory might be the best one in the sport this year: he never started a game at quarterback in high school. Now he's being asked to help rebuild Oklahoma State. The Cowboys are the lowest-floor program on this list, which is exactly why Mestemaker ranks this high. Nobody else on the roster moves the needle quite like he does. He could move it almost entirely by himself.

7. Will Hammond, QB, Texas Tech

What broke: Texas Tech reached the playoff, but lost Will Hammond to a torn ACL in October. Now one of the Big 12's most ambitious programs enters 2026 with its season resting heavily on whether its young quarterback is truly ready to take over.

Hammond was always viewed as the long-term plan in Lubbock. Over two seasons, he's completed 62.7 percent of his throws for 1,151 yards, nine touchdowns and five interceptions, showing enough in limited opportunities to make the upside obvious. The question isn't whether the talent is there. It's how quickly he can turn flashes into consistency after spending much of the offseason recovering.

The expectations around him aren't small. Texas Tech opened 12th in the Coaches Poll and enters the season as a legitimate Big 12 contender. That ranking assumes a healthy quarterback capable of running an offense with championship ambitions.

Joey McGuire has said he expects Hammond ready for the Sept. 5 opener against Abilene Christian, but the knee has limited his offseason work. For all the talent surrounding him, the equation in Lubbock is remarkably simple: if Hammond is healthy and ready, Texas Tech has a chance to be one of the best teams in the Big 12. If he isn't, the entire projection changes.

No player on this list carries more expectation on less certainty.

8. DJ Lagway, QB, Baylor

What broke: Baylor went 5–7 and lost Sawyer Robertson to graduation. Separately, DJ Lagway broke at Florida.

He was a top-ten recruit in the 2024 class and went 12–12 as the Gators' starter, throwing 28 touchdowns against 23 interceptions across 24 games. The 2025 season was worse than the 2024 season — 16 touchdowns, 14 picks — as Florida collapsed and fired Billy Napier midseason.

Baylor is a soft landing in the best sense. Offensive coordinator Jake Spavital has a long history with quarterbacks and just coached Robertson to second nationally in passing yards. Lagway's father played for the Bears in the nineties, and Willis, Texas is two hours down the road. Lagway doesn't need to arrive in Waco as the player everyone once projected him to become. He needs to become a good quarterback again. There is no spotlight in Waco. That may be the whole point.

9. Byrum Brown, QB, Auburn

What broke: Auburn's quarterback position, for the entirety of the Hugh Freeze era.

New head coach Alex Golesh declined to inherit the problem.

He brought Byrum Brown with him from South Florida, where the two have already worked together for three seasons — 2026 makes four. Brown has 32 career starts and an 18–14 record, including 9–3 last year.

In the current version of college football, that relationship almost feels abnormal. Quarterbacks transfer, coordinators leave, rosters turn over and systems change. Brown and Golesh already know each other. Continuity is the rarest commodity in the sport right now. Auburn just bought four years of it in one transaction, and it could produce the program's best quarterback situation in half a decade.

10. Christopher Vizzina, QB, Clemson

What broke: Clemson, more or less entirely. The Tigers went 7–6 and finished unranked for the first time since 2010. Then Cade Klubnik left for the Jets in the NFL Draft.

The coaches opened Clemson 23rd this preseason — its lowest preseason position in that poll since 2011, when the Tigers began the year unranked. Clemson had started in the Coaches Poll top ten every year from 2016 through 2023. That is not a bad season. That is an arc. And now Christopher Vizzina gets his chance to change its direction.

Vizzina is the fourth-year junior who has waited three years for this, which by itself makes him something of a period piece: almost nobody sits behind a starter that long anymore. He has one career start, and it was a good one — 29-of-42 for 317 yards and three touchdowns without an interception against SMU, making him the first Clemson quarterback to throw three or more scores in a starting debut since Deshaun Watson in 2014. Across 14 career appearances, he's completed 61 percent of his passes for 596 yards.

Dabo Swinney says he's in the "pole position." That phrasing is doing work. True freshman Tait Reynolds arrived in January, pushed Vizzina through spring and hasn't stopped, and Swinney has been open that the competition runs through camp. New coordinator Chad Morris said Vizzina opens fall camp as the guy, which is a narrower statement than naming a Week 1 starter.

The upside case is concrete. Bill Connelly, of ESPN, ranked Vizzina 27th among the 40 most important players in the sport and noted that SP+ had Clemson second in the ACC — conditional on the quarterback. He'll throw to returning juniors T.J. Moore and Bryant Wesco Jr. The downside case is also on the record: an ACC personnel staffer, speaking to The Athletic, described him as just OK.

The test comes immediately: Clemson opens Sept. 5 at LSU, against Sam Leavitt. Two of the ten players on this list get to start settling the argument in the same stadium, on the same night.

The through-line

Seven of these ten are quarterbacks, and that isn't laziness. It's the actual distribution of leverage in college football. One position touches every snap. When a program's ceiling moves five wins in either direction, it is usually because of the person taking the ball.

But notice the pattern underneath. Almost none of these players are freshmen or complete unknowns. They're players with real résumés who have landed somewhere the fit might finally be right — a coach they've worked with before, a coordinator built to fix their specific flaw, a roster that solves what their old one didn't.

That's one of the more interesting consequences of the transfer-portal era. The portal doesn't just redistribute talent anymore. It redistributes second chances.

Taylor gets Mississippi State. Simmons gets Missouri. Leavitt gets Kiffin. Chiles gets Kelly. Coleman gets Texas. Mestemaker follows Morris. Hammond gets his job back. Lagway gets a reset. Brown keeps his coach. Vizzina finally gets his turn.

Ten players. Ten pressure points. Ten seasons that could look completely different depending on what happens next. Week 0 kicks off Aug. 29. By October, some of these bets will already look obvious.

The interesting part is figuring out which ones before everybody else does.