The college football off-season has officially hit its final stretch, which means we are entering ‘list season’. Heavy-hitting publications like ESPN, CBS Sports, The Sporting News, and basically everyone else are rolling out their variations of preseason top quarterback rankings for 2026, and things are getting a bit weird when it comes to Ohio State QB1, Julian Sayin.

Even though Julian Sayin is a returning Heisman finalist who just broke the Power-4 record of 77%, analysts are leaving him completely out of their top three.CBS Sports has him at No. 6; ESPN slots him in Tier 1B. The logic? He apparently gets penalized because he has a guy like Jeremiah Smith on his team. But according to The Sporting News senior writer Bill Bender, that is a flawed way to rank players, and it shouldn’t hold him back at all.

“He gets penalized a little bit for who he’s throwing to. But it doesn’t take away from what he’s done, you know, 77% completion percentage, throwing the ball down the field very effectively,” Bender told The Bobby Carpenter Show. “(Julian Sayin) just played amazing football, made the right reads, threw touchdowns to Carnell Tate and Jeremiah Smith, and I think he has another big year this year en route to being a first-round pick. So I don’t penalize Julian Sayin for the supporting cast around him, nor should anybody else.”

Julian Sayin is landing way lower than he should in these major national polls, with some behind the likes of Trinidad Chambliss and Darian Mensah. Bill Bender put him at No. 5 overall on his list for The Sporting News; other major outlets like CBS Sports went even further, dropping him to No. 6 nationally. It’s created this massive argument in the college football world right now: analysts are actively docking the Ohio State star because they think his historic 32-touchdown freshman campaign was just a product of an overpowered Ohio State system, rather than his own elite talent.

So, what does this “supporting cast penalty” actually mean? A real shift is occurring in how college football judges quarterbacks. While traditional metrics rely on raw completion percentages, analysts increasingly favor advanced stats like ESPN’s CPOE to account for throw difficulty. This has sparked a fierce debate over Ohio State’s Julian Sayin. Skeptics argue that an overpowered offense and elite weapons like Jeremiah Smith inflated his 32-touchdown freshman season, but major outlets still rank him among the nation’s top five quarterbacks.

Basically, people are treating Sayin’s ridiculous stats like they were inflated by a totally unfair wide receiver room. The main excuse for pushing him down the rankings is sophomore superstar Jeremiah Smith. Smith is a unanimous All-American, led the Big Ten in receiving yards, and is viewed as the greatest WR of the 21st century.

They take one look at the Buckeyes’ pretty deep receiver group, anchored by Smith and elite weapons like fellow elite receiver Carnell Tate, and use it as a reason to slide Sayin down on their list boards. Bender went further, calling Sayin the “most undersold returning Heisman finalist in a long time.”

Let us take an example to understand the situation better. If you’re a chef cooking with flame-hot ingredients, do you blame the spice for making your dish shine? Sayin didn’t just throw to Smith, but built the offense around him, hitting 32 touchdowns by reading defenses like a veteran. That’s not system luck; that’s quarterback IQ.

Julian Sayin finished the year with a massive 177.46 passer rating, which was the second-best in the country. He tied for the national lead with 11 touchdown passes of 30+ yards, and he showed serious cool-under-pressure poise by beating Michigan right after throwing an early interception. Those are the exact traits that usually put a quarterback at the absolute top of every list.

Why is it fair?

To prove how hypocritical this whole thing is, Bender pointed back to college football history. Nobody ever knocked Joe Burrow when he was throwing to a legendary crew of future NFL superstars like Ja’Marr Chase, Justin Jefferson, or guys like Terrace Marshall Jr. at LSU.

Nobody was saying anything to Tua Tagovailoa when he was slinging the rocks to the team of first-rounders at Alabama like Jerry Jeudy, Jaylen Waddle, Henry Ruggs III, and DeVonta Smith in one of Nick Saban’s final years.

No disrespect to those legends, but those guys got praised for maximizing their elite weapons on their way to national titles and top draft picks. So it makes no sense whatsoever that the media is suddenly switching up the rules to hurt Sayin for doing the same thing with Jeremiah Smith and company.

However, Sayin is entering this season quite unlike any other for Ryan Day’s squad. Bender believes Sayin will end the season as a first-rounder, who could reach for the Heisman when everything’s said and done.