The on-field chaos of the 2026 college football season has rippled into the crop of top quarterbacks being evaluated for the 2027 NFL draft.

That QB class, once considered both flush with talent and deep, has taken a significant hit since the start of the season. Players such as Texas ' Arch Manning , South Carolina 's LaNorris Sellers and LSU 's Sam Leavitt haven't shown themselves as surefire prospects.

ESPN conducted a midseason poll of 25 scouts and executives, asking who the top quarterback will be in next year's draft. Not surprisingly, the choppy play of top prospects yielded drastically different results from the August QB1 poll.

Seventeen of the 25 scouts in the midseason poll voted for Oklahoma State 's Drew Mestemaker . The 17 votes are the most a quarterback has received in the three years ESPN has conducted the poll, with the overwhelming conviction about Mestemaker perhaps more a surprise than his general emergence.…