We are in the midst of something special this college football season. The top two schools in every poll this year, Clemson and Alabama, return the two best quarterbacks in the country. Both quarterbacks have already won national titles and neither is even a senior yet.
Tua Tagovailoa and Trevor Lawrence are going to go down as two of the most prolific quarterbacks in college football history. Though Lawrence came out on top in their lone matchup last January, let's turn to the vast Pro Football Focus database to determine which signal-caller we'd rather have this upcoming season and the professional outlook for each QB.
The grades
The first thing that jumped out when researching this duo was just how dominant both quarterbacks have been in the PFF grading system. Tagovailoa's 90.7 passing grade as a sophomore is the second best we've ever seen from a quarterback in his second season of college football (Mason Rudolph's 91.9 in 2015 ranks first). Lawrence's 90.6 passing grade as a true freshman is even more unheard of and blows away every other freshman season we've graded. The next-closest single season was an 81.5 passing grade by Texas Tech quarterback Alan Bowman this past season.
These two quarterbacks not only were consistent over the course of the season but showed the ability to take over games, as well. Tagovailoa had five separate games with elite passing grades over 90.0, and Lawrence did so in two of his last four games of the season. There were only 97 such games in all of college football last season and the duo combined for seven of them.
