We continue our nationwide swing to highlight the best-returning players by conference. Today we are looking at the ACC’s best returning quarterbacks.
To take a moment to review the criteria, the player must be returning within the conference. They can be a transfer player who makes the list if they stayed within the conference. But if they transferred from outside of the ACC into the conference, we are not considering them. That means you are not going to see Cam Ward, Kyle McCord, Grayson McCall, D.J. Uiagalelei, or Hank Bachmeier in here.
We did include players from Stanford, Cal, and SMU. The move to the ACC was not their decision, so we gave our writers some wiggle room. So with that, here are our best returning ACC quarterbacks:
4; Kyron Drones-VA Tech
Drones came to the Hokies via the transfer portal before the 2023 season. He spent two years at Baylor, having played in all of seven games during that span. But he shined in Blacksburg in 2023. He stepped in when starter Grant Wells was hurt in the first month of the season. He threw for 2,085 yards and rushed for another 818. He also accounted for 22 touchdowns, (17 passing and five rushing). Once he became the starter in mid-September, he only had one poor performance, (69 passing yards and no touchdowns in a 31-point loss to Louisville).
There is no question he goes into Fall camp this year as the starter, with big potential.
3; Haynes King-Georgia Tech
King spent three years at Texas A&M before moving to GA Tech in time for the 2023 season. Despite being a four-star prospect out of high school in Texas, he saw limited action in College Station in his three years there. He played in 10 games total and only attempted 24 passes total in his first two seasons.
But he moved to Atlanta and showed all of his on-field traits. In 2023, King threw for 2,842 yards with a 61.6 completion percentage. He added 737 yards and 10 touchdowns on the ground. He threw for 27 touchdowns, but the 16 interceptions are a problem that will necessitate work on his reads, and not relying so heavily on arm talent alone.
2; Cade Klubnik-Clemson
We toyed with moving Klubnik higher up the list, and also with moving him down the list. That’s the thing with this second-year starter…where does he belong? We are still waiting for the quarterback who Tigers fans saw so much promise in back in 2022 that they were holding the virtual door open for D.J. Uiagalelei to leave.
What Clemson got in 2023 was a quarterback who has good numbers on the surface, as long as you just stay on the surface. He threw for a tick over 2,800 yards on a 64% completion clip. The 19 touchdown passes to nine interception ratio was less than ideal.
He was hampered by not having the elite-level receivers around him that the three quarterbacks prior to him were blessed with. Dabo Swinney’s insistence on not using the transfer portal meant the Tigers did not replenish in the skill position areas the way other schools did.
And maybe that is the reason the “below-the-surface-stats” looked the way they did for Klubnik. There was no deep passing game in the Clemson arsenal in 2023. Klubnik had the fewest passing yards per attempt than any other starting quarterback in the ACC, (6.3). He also had only six touchdown passes in the last six games of the season. And even at that, there was a real lack of balance. He had four of those six in one game against Georgia Tech. And he had three games in that last month-and-a-half with zero touchdown passes.
Still, we have seen Klubnik’s ability. And we think a second year under Garrett Riley’s tutelage will provide enough results for us to put him as the #2 returning quarterback.
1; Preston Stone-SMU
This will be news to long-time ACC fans because few of them have seen Stone play. But we have been following him since he signed years ago with SMU under former head coach Sonny Dykes. The now-TCU coach was effusive in his praise of Stone’s potential.
The four-star recruit out of Dallas only played in nine games in 2021-2022. And he only attempted 55 passes over those two seasons.
But then he got the starting job in 2023 and showed why head coach Rhett Lashlee was just as eager to see him on the field as Dykes had previously been. He threw for 3,197 yards to go with 28 touchdowns against just six interceptions. As SMU went 10-2 on the regular season, the only game in which he did not have a touchdown pass was in a loss to TCU. He also had just one interception over the last seven games of the regular season.
All of that was good enough to get him a 91.0 passing grade from PFF, putting him third in the country in that stat.
With a full year as a starter on his resume now, and with plenty of skill position talent at his disposal for the Mustangs, we are going to assume a big year ahead for Stone.
