Syracuse Football: Garrett Shrader in top 10 of national QB power rankings

I know it’s super early in the 2022 season, and we’ll see how quarterback Garrett Shrader and the rest of the Syracuse football roster fare this Saturday afternoon when the Orange hosts Big Ten Conference member Purdue in an exciting non-conference clash on the Hill.

However, as we noted in another column earlier this week, ‘Cuse fans are absolutely delighted so far with how Shrader looks in the team’s passing attack, particularly as compared to a stanza ago when the Orange’s offense was heavily reliant on its ground game.

Of course, as a Syracuse University alumni, I tend to have Orange-colored glasses on, but one national pundit is certainly high on Shrader at this juncture in the young 2022 stanza.

Tom Fornelli of CBS Sports recently published a story where he doled out his national power rankings for the quarterback position. Naturally, there are QBs on this list who reside from heavyweight programs such as Alabama, Ohio State, Oklahoma and the defending national champs, Georgia.

But Syracuse football quarterback Garrett Shrader is also in these national rankings.

Fornelli, it pleases me to share, has Garrett Shrader at No. 7 across the country in his quarterback power ratings. By the way, the only other QB in the Atlantic Coast Conference who is higher in these rankings than Shrader is North Carolina’s Drake Maye, who arrives at No. 4 nationwide.

"Check out Fornelli’s write-up on Shrader in his article on national quarterback power rankings. “Ladies and gentlemen, meet 2022’s answer to 2021’s Brennan Armstrong. Last year, Virginia’s Armstrong burst onto the scene and lit up box scores. Robert Anae was Armstrong’s offensive coordinator, and now he’s up north at Syracuse with Shrader. Guess what? Shrader is shredding. He has 646 total yards and eight total touchdowns through two games, and Syracuse suddenly looks feisty. The Orange are a fun watch this year.”"

Undeniably, Anae has played a huge role in Shrader’s hot start this term. However, let’s also give credit where credit is due to Syracuse football quarterbacks coach Jason Beck, who like Anae left Virginia for the Orange (2-0) in the off-season.

Understandably, star running back Sean Tucker got a lot of preseason national accolades ahead of the 2022 campaign after breaking the team’s single-season rushing record in 2021 and becoming an All-American.

Tucker, through two games, and two wins for the ‘Cuse, has proven solid so far. But to me, the MVP for Syracuse football through two encounters is unequivocally Shrader, who simply appears much more comfortable throwing the ball in 2022 as compared to last year.

We detailed all of Shrader’s impressive statistics to date in 2022 in that other piece on him earlier this week, so I won’t be redundant here.

But suffice it to say, he sure looks like one of the 10 best quarterbacks around the country at this point in time, and Shrader recently was added to the midseason watch list for the 2022 Davey O’Brien Award, which annually honors the top QB around the country.

Of course, let’s see how Garrett Shrader & Co. do this Saturday afternoon in Central New York versus a challenging foe in Purdue (1-1).