Syracuse Football 2025 Preview: Where does the Orange stand at quarterback in 2025?

With the 2025 Syracuse football season days away, we’ve covered every position except the most important one: quarterback. It might be fair to say that Syracuse fans were a little spoiled last season by Kyle McCord. He had one of the greatest seasons by a quarterback in program history, making it hard to envision anyone else matching what McCord did in 2024. Of course, the Orange has a quarterback, perhaps more than one, who are going to try.

The starter

It’s been a while since Syracuse experienced the type of too-close-to-call, hard-to-figure-out quarterback competition as we saw during training camp. In the end, head coach Fran Brown named Steve Angeli the starter for the season opener against Tennessee. Despite not being with the Orange during spring practice and only transferring to Syracuse over the summer, Angeli did enough to be named the starter.

Angeli was a four-star recruit and an Under Armour All-American coming out of high school. He went to Notre Dame, redshirting in 2022 and then serving as the backup to Sam Hartman in 2023 and Riley Leonard last season. With no guarantee of being the starter this season, Angeli left South Bend over the summer and came to Syracuse. It’s a situation that’s not all that different from the path McCord took to Syracuse.

The difference is that McCord had a full year of experience as a starter under his belt, while Angeli doesn’t. In a backup role, Angeli has just 80 career pass attempts. Of course, he has thrown for 772 yards with 10 touchdowns and just one interception in that limited playing time. That includes going 6 for 7 for 44 yards in a brief cameo against Penn State in the CFP semifinals last season. That drive is the best evidence we have that Angeli is ready to take the reins and at least come close to replicating McCord’s success from 2024.

The backups

Rickie Collins ended up on the short end of the quarterback battle with Angeli. He also transferred to Syracuse after last season in search of an opportunity to start. Collins was third-string behind Heisman winner Jayden Daniels two years ago. Last season, he was the backup to Garrett Nussmeier and would have had that same role this year had he stayed at LSU. Instead, he’s set to be Angeli’s backup with the Orange.

That being said, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Brown find a way to use Collins. After all, he was also a four-star recruit coming out of high school. Collins also won the starting job in the spring before Angeli joined the Orange. By all accounts, the competition between Angeli and Collins was as tight as can be, so even with just seven career pass attempts, there might not be a huge drop off if Syracuse needs Collins to step in for one reason or another.

While the Angeli-Collins competition garnered a lot of attention during training camp, don’t forget about redshirt freshman Jakhari Williams. He was the main source of competition for Collins during spring practice and gave a good account of himself. For the second straight season, it looks like Williams will be the third-string quarterback. He may or may not see the field at all in 2025, although as the only freshman quarterback signed in the class of 2024, the coaching staff is undoubtedly high on him.

The rest

There aren’t many college football success stories that involve the fourth-string quarterback seeing significant playing time. Nevertheless, there are quarterbacks on the roster outside of Angeli, Collins, and Williams. Luke Carney and Rich Belin were both part of the 2025 recruiting class. Carney hails from Texas, while Belin is a Harlem native who led his high school to the New York State title in 2023. Joseph Filardi is another freshman quarterback who is a walk-on but was also one of Gary Gait’s top recruits this year for the Syracuse men’s lacrosse team.

The skinny

One could choose to look at Syracuse’s quarterback situation as either glass half full or glass half empty. On the one hand, both Angeli and Collins are likely prepared to be the starter. It just happened to be Angeli who did a little more during training camp to earn the starting job. That means the Orange potentially has two quarterbacks capable of leading the offense. On the other hand, neither quarterback has much playing experience, so one way or another, there could be growing pains at that position this season. Luckily, it won’t be long until we start learning some of the answers to these questions.