New faces and unknown commodities mark the state of quarterback play in the American Athletic Conference in 2025.
The days of running it back with the same starting quarterback at the Group of 5 level might not be over just yet, but they’re certainly becoming less and less frequent as player movement accelerates and the college football world becomes more connected and informed. That new-world reality is particularly stark when assessing the American Athletic Conference quarterback landscape for the upcoming 2025 season.
Among the 14 AAC teams, three distinct categories can be defined.
Starting Fresh
The AAC will be replacing some marquee names at the position in 2025. Seth Hennigan has finally run out of eligibility following a record-setting career at Memphis. Tulane’s Darrien Mensah was one of the more high-profile transfer stories of the offseason, signing with Duke. Potential Heisman darkhorse Bryson Daley has graduated from Army and the gunslinging Chandler Morris is no longer at North Texas.
Conservatively, that list includes four of the top six players at the position from a season ago. Tack on roster reshuffling at Charlotte, Rice and Florida Atlantic and you’ve got seven of the 14 programs in the league who will be starting new quarterbacks in 2025. When it comes time to sort out a potential pecking order the sheer number of new faces at the most important position will make that a challenge.
Returning, but Unrefined
Consistency, especially at the quarterback position, is usually viewed as a positive and while that’s probably the case for the next batch of program’s it’s not as if the guys they’re bringing back are slam dunk, top-of-the-line Group of 5 quarterbacks.
Temple (Evan Simon), UAB (Jalen Kitna), Tulsa (Kirk Francis) and East Carolina (Kaitin Houser) make up the returning quarterbacks who produced mixed results at their programs a season ago. Francis and Simon completed less than 60 percent of their passes, Kitna and Houser threw double-digit interceptions. Add on coaching changes at Temple and ECU (albeit, hiring their interim head coach) and you’ve got more uncertainty to deal with.
Any or all of those four players may improve their game in 2025. That’s what their respective staffs will be expecting. But it’s not a sure thing and there’s no guarantee this group isn’t better than some of the reshuffling the programs in the first group did during the offseason.
Returning Studs
Which brings us to the shortest list: returning studs. At the forefront of this group is Navy quarterback Blake Horvath and UTSA signal caller Owen McCown. Horvath spurred one of the more improbable turn-around seasons in the AAC last year, leading Navy to 10 wins. McCown led all returning AAC passers with 3,422 yards passing last season and 25 touchdowns.
South Florida’s Byrum Brown gets a nod in this group, but with an asterisk of sorts. He was tremendous in 2023 before missing most of 2024 with an injury. When he did get on the field, he wasn’t nearly as impressive. He deserves at least some benefit of the doubt that a fully healthy version of himself belongs in this group, but even with him included, the list of bonafide stars at this position is extremely thin.
