There was already one five-star true freshman starting at QB in the SEC. Beginning this weekend, there will be two.<\/p>\n
Vanderbilt<\/a>, which has started veteran Blaze Berlowitz<\/a> at quarterback in its first two games, is expected to make a quarterback change and start five-star true freshman Jared Curtis<\/a> against NC State<\/a> on Saturday, sources tell CBS Sports.<\/p>\n Curtis has opened this week working with the first-team offense in practice, per sources.<\/p>\n Vanderbilt head coach Clark Lea on Tuesday confirmed that Curtis would start for the Commodores against NC State.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Jared Curtis will start for us this weekend against North Carolina State,” Lea said. “He’s earned it. He’s worked really hard.”\u00a0<\/p>\n Curtis, the highest-ranked recruit in Vanderbilt history, was rated as the second-best quarterback and second-best overall prospect in the 2026 recruiting class, behind only Houston’s<\/a> Keisean Henderson<\/a>.<\/p>\n After going 7-of-9 for 60 yards in limited action during the Commodores’ season-opening 28-9 win over Austin Peay<\/a>, Curtis replaced a struggling Berlowitz after the second series of Vanderbilt’s win over Delaware<\/a> this past weekend and then played the rest of the game aside from a Berlowitz series late in the second quarter that ended in a three-and-out.<\/p>\n Curtis finished the game 14-of-22 with 210 passing yards, a touchdown pass, two rushing touchdowns and no interceptions during the 35-26 victory.<\/p>\n Lea indicated after the game that the plan all along was for Curtis to step in for that third series, and he later declined to name a starting QB moving forward. However, he was complimentary of Curtis’ performance.\u00a0<\/p>\n Lea said after seeing both Berlowitz and Curtis in game action for two weeks, he feels like Curtis puts Vanderbilt in the best position moving forward.<\/p>\n “I thought in the second half he showed some real command and control of the offense,” Lea said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Lea added that he expects Berlowitz to play a role for Vanderbilt as the season continues.\u00a0<\/p>\n “We’re going to need Blaze as the year goes on,” Lea said. “I’m very confident in him as a No. 2. He’s shown he can operate but also make plays.”\u00a0<\/p>\n Lea said the Commodores have split reps in practice between Berlowitz and Lea around 60-40 the first two weeks of the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n Moving forward, Curtis will take the reps with the first team, which Lea expects to be valuable experience for the freshman quarterback as he continues to develop in Vanderbilt’s scheme.<\/p>\n “We’ve been trying to make sure Blaze is ready and also feeding Jared reps knowing that’s part of his development,” Lea said. “We can shift that now. He gets more reps, more looks at the things he may not be quite comfortable with yet. And hopefully that leads to him slowing the game down and playing from a place of confidence, because he’s seen it in practice has done it over and over.<\/p>\n “This is a guy who has a ton of confidence in himself, that shown through on Saturday. If we can get him to operate in his progression for 70% of the game and there’s 30% where he can create, which makes him special, but certainly being able to organize around him is going to benefit him and our offense a bunch.”\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There was already one five-star true freshman starting at QB in the SEC. Beginning this weekend, there will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":848998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[350044,1607,399,135359,5043,398,396,397,99,17358],"class_list":["post-848997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-blaze-berlowitz","tag-college-football","tag-football","tag-jared-curtis","tag-nc-state-wolfpack","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-sports","tag-vanderbilt-commodores"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=848997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/848998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=848997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=848997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=848997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}