Spartan quarterback Aidan Chiles is certainly off to a better beginning to his 2025 season compared to last year – his first as a starter. A couple former MSU QB’s who transferred out after the 2023 season are also
producing for their new teams.
Katin Houser went to East Carolina and took over the Pirates’ starting job a few games into the 2024 season.
Meanwhile, Sam Leavitt is in his second year at Arizona State and led the Sun Devils on a surprise run to the College Football Playoff last year.
We thought it would be interesting to compare these three players over the 2024 season and the early part of 2025 while also looking at their improvement from year one to year two as a starting quarterback.
If interested, all of the data used for this article is here and was taken from ESPN.com. As mentioned, Chiles, Leavitt, and Houser were all first-year starters in 2024. Chiles and Leavitt started from the beginning of the year while Houser was promoted to the starting role in October. Over the course of the 2024 season and the early part of 2025, Houser has played in 14 games, Chiles in 16, and Leavitt in 18. We looked at the following readily-available statistics during this time period:
- Completion percentage
- Yards per pass attempt
- Passing yards per game
- TD : INT ratio
- Rushing yards per game
- Total yards per game
- Total TD’s per game
First, the passing statistics:
It’s interesting to see how close these three are in completion percentage and yards per attempt. Chiles and Houser have significantly improved their completion percentage this year while Leavitt is continuing on from a very successful 2024 campaign. Chiles has also only thrown one interception so far this year (a ball deflected behind the line of scrimmage) but Leavitt is the clear leader in TD:INT ratio.
Each quarterback can also be a capable runner, with Chiles and Leavitt running much more effectively so far this year compared to 2024. Overall, Leavitt is the clear leader here:
Finally, looking at total yards per game (passing + running) and total touchdowns per game:
At the time of this writing, Houser is fourth among FBS quarterbacks with 1509 passing yards through five games. However, he’s throwing it on average 36 times per game compared to Leavitt’s 31.4 while Chiles is averaging just 25.5 passes per game so far in 2025.
It should probably also be noted that Houser is facing primarily group of five teams at East Carolina, however, in five games so far this year, ECU has played two power four conference teams.
So what do you think, TOC? Which of these quarterbacks will end up having the best season in 2025?
