How did Aidan Chiles compare to his predecessors?
The 2024 college football season saw a number of former Michigan State signal-callers at the helm of other teams. In total, four other programs had a former Spartan QB playing for at least part of the season. Payton Thorne just finished his second year at Auburn, and his final year of college eligibility. After the 2023 season, three more quarterbacks departed from East Lansing. Noah Kim transferred to Coastal Carolina, Katin Houser went to East Carolina, and Sam Leavitt took his talents to Arizona State.
In this article we are going to compare the 2024 seasons of each of these players to the season that new MSU QB Aidan Chiles had.
Let’s begin with Jayden Reed’s childhood best friend, Payton Thorne. As you remember, Thorne took over the starting role in the middle of the pandemic-affected season of 2020 from Rocky Lombardi, and then was the starter in 2021 and 2022. After that second season, when Reed went to the NFL and Keon Coleman went to Florida State, Thorne, uncertain that he would continue as the MSU starter among some new competition in the room, transferred to SEC program Auburn. In 2023, he led them to a 6-6 record and a loss in the Music City Bowl. This past year, Auburn went 5-7 and missed the postseason; Thorne did not play in one of those victories, so he gets marked down at 4-7. For his final season, he completed 199/317 (62.8%) for 2,713 yards, 21 TDs and 9 INTs. He also ran for 283 yards and 2 more scores. News has it that Payton is in discussions to join the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the Canadian Football League.
Next up is Noah Kim, who started the first five games of MSU’s 2023 season. In those appearances, Kim threw for just over 1,000 yards, 6 TDs and 6 INTs. After that, he was replaced by Houser and did not play anymore for MSU. Kim’s next destination was Conway, South Carolina, site of the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers (from my research, named after a rooster in Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales”) of the Sun Belt Conference. In his season there, Kim served as the primary backup and appeared in 7 games. Only two of those games did he throw more than 10 passes including a high of 25 in a game where he came in after an injury to the starter. For the whole campaign, he went 91/160 (56.9%) for 1,090 yards with 4 TDs and 1 INT. Since the end of the season, he has reentered the transfer portal. I am not sure if he redshirted 2022, where he appeared in 3 games, so he will have either one or two seasons of eligibility left.
Katin Houser is the guy who replaced Noah Kim in 2023, and he started the final seven games of the season, though he also appeared briefly in four earlier games. For the year, he tossed 112 completions on 191 attempts (58.6%) for 1,130 yards along with 6 TDs and 5 INTs. He also rushed for 2 TDs, though he had negative total yardage with his legs. Not making it to the end of a handful of his starts, Houser also transferred to the Carolinas, choosing the East Carolina Pirates of the American Athletic Conference. He did not win the starting job to begin the season but eventually did take over that role. In total he appeared in 8 games and was the starter for the final six, in which the Pirates went 4-2. For his season with ECU, Houser completed 131/216 for 1,859 yards. He also had 18 TDs and 9 INTs as well as 86 rushing yards and 2 rushing TDs. He has two years of eligibility remaining, and for now is still on the ECU roster.
Lastly, is Sam Leavitt. The story on Leavitt’s departure from East Lansing was that he, an Oregon native, was upset that Jonathan Smith did not offer him a scholarship to Oregon State and did not want to stay when Smith came to town. In the 2023 season, Leavitt relieved Houser in four games, usually once defeat was already decided, though he did throw a TD in the 4th quarter of the Nebraska game to help MSU get the victory that day. For his time as a Spartan, he finished 15/23 (65.2%) for 139 yards along with 2 TDs and 2 picks. In 2024, Leavitt left for Arizona State, now of the Big 12, and promptly won the starting role. He missed one game with an injury, but led the Sun Devils to an 11-2 record (they lost the one game he missed) including a win in the Big 12 title game and a berth in the Playoffs. His numbers on the season were 192/304 (63.2%) for 2,663 yards, 24 TDs, and 5 INTs, plus 383 rushing yards and 5 rushing TDs. His season will continue next weekend and then he has 3 more years of eligibility.
By comparison, Aidan Chiles got the start in all 12 games this year and finished the season going 192/323 (59.4%) along with 13 TDs and 11 INTs. He chipped in 225 yards on the ground and 3 more scores. Having appeared in 9 games in his season at OSU, he now has two years left of college ball remaining.