With San Diego's Anthony Lawrence and Samford's Devlin Hodges out of the picture, there's room for a new FCS quarterback to step up and stake his claim as the best.
Lawrence led FCS in passing touchdowns last year with 39, while Hodges lit up the skies for an FCS-best 4,283 passing yards.
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There are five returning quarterbacks that stick out as candidates to claim the top spot as the best under-center at the FCS level. They are VMI's Reece Udinski, Towson's Tom Flacco, UC Davis' Jake Maier, South Dakota's Austin Simmons, and Jacksonville State's Zerrick Cooper.
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Using Google Flourish, we can see here how each quarterback performed on a weekly basis last season. Udinski had the highest single-game passing total, throwing for 491 yards and four touchdowns against Western Carolina. Maier finished the season with the highest total, tossing passes for 3,931 yards over 13 games.
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Maier was also the leader in passing touchdowns last season, coming just behind Lawrence with 34 tosses that wound up in the endzone. Although, Cooper bested him in total scores, throwing for 32 touchdowns and scrambling for another six. Maier and Cooper also proved to be elusive, each getting sacked less than 20 times.
The Flourish chart below shows how many touchdowns, interceptions, rushing scores, sacks suffered, completion percentage and games played each quarterback totaled last season.
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The one bummer about this upcoming FCS season is that none of these quarterbacks are scheduled to face-off against each other for a must-watch one-on-one battle. We'll hold out hope for an FCS Playoffs match-up.
Mitchell Northam is a graduate of Salisbury University. His work has been featured at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Orlando Sentinel, SB Nation, FanSided, USA Today and the Delmarva Daily Times. He grew up on Maryland's Eastern Shore and is now based in Durham, N.C.
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