Vanderbilt Quarterback Deep Dive: Inside the Battle to Replace Diego Pavia

I told you this was coming. In my position group rankings, quarterback landed dead last… the one room “keeping me up at night” heading into the Austin Peay opener. Here’s the deep dive I promised, because no single position battle in the country carries more weight than the one happening on West End right now.

Right now it’s Jared Curtis and Blaze Berlowitz at the top, with real separation from everyone else in the room. Berlowitz was Diego Pavia’s backup for two seasons at Vanderbilt, and the clear QB2 all of last year. Behind those two, Whit Muschamp and Jack Elliott are both in the mix on paper, and Utah transfer Drew Cowart rounds out the room, but by every account out of camp, this is a two-man race. Barring injury, one of Curtis or Berlowitz is walking out of Nashville with the job, and the other three names are years away or insurance policies at best.

Clark Lea has said all offseason he might not name a starter until days before kickoff, and through the spring that felt like coach-speak. It doesn’t anymore. Curtis and Berlowitz have both taken snaps with the first team in practice, and Lea has been explicit that he’s grading ball security, decision-making and playmaking ability above all else. The competition has run through the team’s first scrimmage of camp, and neither guy has been named the starter, but the tone out of the building has shifted. After Curtis’s performance in that scrimmage, Lea called it his best day of camp “start to finish,” pointing to a throw where Curtis found a receiver in mid-air and completed several passes that he squeezed into tight windows. Lea also said he’s encouraged that Curtis is starting to process the game more calmly, not just making splash plays. Berlowitz, meanwhile, is doing what he’s always done - protecting the football and running the offense the way it’s drawn up, which is exactly what two years as Pavia’s backup should produce.

This isn’t really a bold pick anymore so much as it is the obvious one. Curtis was the No. 1 overall quarterback in the 2026 class and the highest-rated recruit to ever sign with Vanderbilt, flipping his commitment away from Georgia to stay home in Nashville. He’s a 6-foot-3, 230-pound passer that Lea has compared to Matthew Stafford for how he manipulates arm angles, and he’s reportedly out-weighing every other quarterback on the roster by at least 22 pounds. If Curtis wins the job as a true freshman, he’s not just the breakout player in this room… He’s the breakout story of the entire Vanderbilt season.

Curtis is still a true freshman, and freshmen will make freshman mistakes -even ultra-talented ones. Lea has been careful not to oversell him, noting that for as many “Wow” throws as Curtis produces, there are still protection busts and drops that come with the territory of a young quarterback learning a new system in real time. Berlowitz is the safer bet precisely because he’s already proven he won’t turn the ball over in live SEC snaps, even if his ceiling is lower. If Vanderbilt wants to actually build on last year’s 10-win season, whoever starts has to be a game manager at minimum from Week 1… there’s no redshirt-and-learn plan available for a team with this much roster continuity everywhere else.

Jared Curtis wins the job… and not in a squeaker. Every camp report from the last two weeks reads the same way: Curtis is trending up, Lea keeps finding new ways to praise him without officially naming him, and a five-star talent with this much physical separation from the competition rarely loses these battles once the staff starts talking this openly about his progress. Expect an announcement in the days before Austin Peay, exactly like Lea has said all along, and expect it to be Curtis’s name that gets called.

If you’ve got a number in mind for how many passing yards a true freshman Curtis puts up this season, or you like Berlowitz to sneak away with the job, our partner Underdog is the place to put that opinion to work: https://play.underdogsports.com/vgwg/p-ttvandy

As always Commodore Nation… Anchor Down.