Back in August, before the college football season, Darian Mensah was one of the quarterbacks history was telling us to pay more attention to. Now, three games into 2026, it seems like folks are starting to take notice. Because if we're talking strictly about what the 2027 quarterback class has shown so far, Mensah has a legitimate case for QB1.
And if we're asking the much bigger question — which player has done the most through three weeks to make a case for No. 1 overall … the Miami QB belongs at the front of that conversation, too. Yes, even with that incredibly soft schedule. So far, Mensah has completed 71-of-79 passes (89.9%) for 873 yards, 11 touchdowns, no interceptions and 11.1 yards per attempt.
He has yet to have a single, solitary turnover-worthy play, and his per dropback is 0.74. By comparison, Joe Burrow's EPA/DB was 0.50 in his final college season at LSU; Jayden Daniels was 0.57, and Kyler Murray was 0.63. Put another way: these numbers are silly (seriously, Mensah has THREE more touchdown passes than incompletions as we sit here).
And they don't just stand out within the 2027 QB class. Mensah's start is unusual even compared with the best college quarterbacks going back to 2015; his 89.9% completion percentage and 0.74 EPA/DB would both rank first, and his 11.1 YPA would be good for 12th among the 1,822 passers in the data. There's an obvious caveat here: Mensah has thrown 79 passes, while the names above put together full seasons.
That's also why this can't just be a numbers story. Three games don't put Mensah in the same category as Burrow, Daniels or Murray, but they do make this start unusual enough to be taken seriously. More importantly, this didn't come out of nowhere; before Mensah ever took a snap at Miami, there were already reasons to think his resume was pointing toward something bigger.
This didn't start with three comically elite box scores. Before the season, I built FRED — the First-Round Readiness Score – as another way to look at the 2027 quarterback class. It used variables that have historically separated first-round quarterbacks, with 50 representing the average first-round resume.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
