Exclusive: Clark Lea Talks About Which Quarterbacks Jared Curtis Reminds Him Of – Sports Illustrated

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Vanderbilt freshman quarterback Jared Curtis stood at the goal line of the Commodores football field at FirstBank Stadium warming up for his first spring game. Curtis looked to his left and threw a crisp spiral to receivers for a couple of reps.
His sharp and perfect-looking spirals is a trait that is not seen out of many young quarterbacks, regardless of how they are rated coming out of high school. In fact, the way the ball jumps out of Curtis’ hand among other aspects of his game reminds Vanderbilt head coach Clark Lea about other notable quarterbacks he has watched.
“He’s so natural in the way he sits in the pocket and he releases the ball. The release is really quick and the ball, the way it spins in the velocity, I mean those things stand out. I haven’t seen that kind of explosive release and the ball flight since playing with Jay Cutler,” Lea told Vandy On SI.
Lea had the opportunity to play with Cutler while he played for the Commodores in the early 2000s. Though it has been over 20 years since the two were on the same team, Lea has not forgotten how the ball looked every time Cutler stepped back to pass.
One of the things that jumps off of Curtis’ film going back to his time at Nashville Christian is the confidence and conviction in the way Curtis throws the ball. There are never really any timid passes where the flight of the ball is shaky. Rather, many more times than not, the ball is on a rope when Curtis throws.
But there is another aspect of Curtis’ game that reminds Lea of a current NFL quarterback that will highly likely be in the NFL Hall of Fame one day: his throwing angles.
“The way he manipulates arm angles reminds me a lot of what we see from Matthew Stafford. Just his ability to change the delivery point, which is, in our offense and also in the modern game of football, is so important at the quarterback position,” Lea said. “All the physical traits are there. I mean, it’s really pretty to watch him throw. I love the way he can adjust his arm angle.”
Stafford has made a career out of his no-look, sidearm throws that he has been making since the early seasons of his professional career when he was the quarterback of the Detroit Lions. But along with the evolution of the quarterback position comes the ability for a quarterback to have a skill like odd-angled throws in his toolkit.
In Lea’s eyes, Curtis already has and is continuing to develop that aspect of his game.
Throwing sidearm passes is far from easy, though, especially for a player like Curtis that is just a few months into the college football life. The ability for a quarterback to have that skill is something that Lea believes is a mix of both something a player is born with and coaching.
“Probably a little of both. But certainly it’s a lot harder to coach that kind of thing. It’s a lot easier when they do it naturally,” Lea told Vandy On SI. “Diego was this way. I mean, his ability on the move to change arm slots won us games. I can remember the four-minute play against Alabama in ‘24 where he threw the ball on a little route out of the backfield. We were needing to get a conversion. So, I think there are guys that kind of innately or instinctively can do that. But it’s certainly a part of how we talk about playing the position.”
The talent and skillset Curtis has is something that cannot be denied. He was rated as a five-star plus quarterback for a reason. The thing that remains to be seen is Curtis putting his talent into game action at the college level. If it translates well to his freshman season and if he becomes the starting quarterback, then who knows what Vanderbilt’s ceiling ends up being this fall.
Curtis does not have to be Cutler or Stafford to have a successful freshman season. But if Lea continues to see the elements to Curtis’ game continuing to resemble a younger version of those quarterbacks, that would certainly mean good things for the Commodores in 2026.
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Graham Baakko is a writer for Vanderbilt Commodores On SI, primarily covering football, basketball and baseball. Graham is a recent graduate from the University of Alabama, where he wrote for The Crimson White, WVUA-FM, WVUA 23 as he covered a variety of Crimson Tide sports. He also covered South Carolina athletics as a sportswriting intern for GamecockCentral.
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