What Hilltoppers will be ranked highest in NCAA Football 25?
FB: We're a week away from the highly-anticipated drop of EA Sports' newest NCAA football game. Before we see the how the Tops are ranked, our guess at who could top the roster's rankings.
Christmas is coming early for college football fans. On Friday, EA Sports’ College Football 2025, long waited by the college football video gaming public, drops.
The game will mark the first time in over a decade there will be a new college football game and is a “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” moment for NIL, as players across the country had the ability to opt-in or opt-out of having their name, image and likeness used in the game.
As we get closer to the game’s release more and more details are being announced. Last week, EA Sports announced the top 100 ranked players in the game, and other details, like overall team ratings, have been announced as well.
As we (well, you - I don’t yet have a console so won’t be playing immediately) prepare for the game’s release, let’s try our hand at something fun - guessing which players on the Hilltoppers’ roster will be the highest overall rated.
Three CUSA players cracked EA’s top 100 rankings, with the highest coming in at 92 (Clay Webb, Jax State) and the lowest being ranked 90 (Quinton Cooley, Liberty).
Overall rankings are a fine line that take every aspect into consideration, and the difference between the No. 37 player and No. 100 player is, what, elite strength? Better awareness?
It’s not a perfect science, but it’s what we have to work with.
One note before we get going: I am not a gamer. I cannot tell you the last time I regularly played a console version of an EA Sports game, yet alone a football game. So these ratings could be wildly incorrect. Or, they could be spot on! That’s the fun of it, no?
A final note: Not every player of every team has opted into the game. I think it’s safe to assume the upper-echelon of WKU’s roster has, but it’s not guaranteed. So a guy or two on here might not be in the game for that reason.
Alright, enough dilly dallying. Let us rank.
1. Upton Stout, 87 OVR
Finishing 2023 as WKU’s No. 3 defensive player by Pro Football Focus, Upton Stout said “no thank you” to the likes of USC, Ole Miss and defending champion Michigan to return to the Hill this past offseason.
Playing in just seven games last season after battling through some injuries, Stout still finished with the 10th-most solo tackles among Hilltopper defenders and led the team with eight defended passes.
Stout is a lockdown guy when he’s on the field and will go a long way to helping fake-WKU live up to that DEF 78 ranking in the game.
2. Quantavious Leslie, 87 OVR
Not only part of an offensive line that ranked second in sacks allowed last in Conference USA last year, Leslie was the highest-rated Topper run blocker by PFF a season ago.
He recorded the second-most number of offensive snaps among the linemen last year, behind only center Vincent Murphy, and allowed just two QB hits in protecting Austin Reed.
3. Michael Mathison, 86 OVR
Few, if any, player’s presence was missed more than Michael Mathison last season, who suffered an injury in fall camp and never recovered enough to see the field in the regular season.
Billed to be the No. 2 option behind Malachi Corley, Mathison not only grew as a receiver in 2022 - his first year in Red and White after transferring from Akron - but he handled kick returns, too. That flexibility makes him the Tops’ leading receiving option in NCAA 25, especially if this is the speed he has.
4. Dalvin Smith, 86 OVR
If Mathison was the “he’s gonna break out next year” guy in 2022, Smith became that guy by the end of 2023.
In games he was targeted seven more more times, Smith averaged no less than 8.6 yards and averaged 9.9 yards or more four times. He eclipsed 120 yards once (vs. Sam Houston) and left a fantastic taste in the mouths of every WKU fan with his three-touchdown performance in the comeback against ODU.
As the presumptive WR2 entering 2023 (assuming Mathison is back and is the top target), there’s no reason he and Mathison won’t be neck-and-neck in the rankings, giving the Hilltoppers a genuine one-two punch in the receiving game.
5. TJ Finley, 85 OVR
Controversial opinion here: But I think Finley not only will get the bump over Caden Veltkamp in the game, but also in winning the starting QB job.
But let’s not discuss that second point just yet.
By all measures, Finley is a tremendous athlete and has a leg up on Veltkamp in two areas, one real and practical and one not so much: Starting experience and Power program experience.
That second one is, admittedly, a lazy national writer talking point. “He signed with LSU out of high school! He started* two years at Auburn!”
Who cares?
Last year at Texas State, Finley was the second-most efficient quarterback in the conference behind only James Madison’s Jordan McCloud and completed 67.4% of his pass attempts, nearly six percentage points better than - an albeit probably mostly unhealthy - Austin Reed did for the Hilltoppers last year in what was a much more balanced offense.
That, I do care about. At least, from a game/player rating perspective.
I don’t think the difference will be stark - maybe two points? I could see Reed being an 83 player if the bowl performance and projecting that over a year in a historically prolific offense are taken into account. But I think the game will have something of an experience bias - 31 games against four - in favor of the Hilltoppers’ newcomer.
I have the early access which should allow me in after 2pm. I'm excited to see everything on WKU! I sitll have an old 2013 game and it will be hard for me to get rid of it permanently because you can see Barnes-Campbell in the distance which is where I lived my first two years on the hill (which is of course gone now). But I'm excited to see the stadium, roster and if our fight song is "in the game"