The Quay Evans Conundrum

By now, you have all heard about Quay Evans getting arrested for running a stop sign and not being able to produce a license when he

Dan Mullen will have to decide the best way to handle Quay Evans. Mandatory Credit: Marvin Gentry-USA TODAY Sports

was pulled over by campus police. I really don’t think this is a big deal as an isolated incident. He ran a stop sign, and depending on what happened, he either a) didn’t have his license on him because he forgot it, or b) didn’t have his license because it had expired. It is customary for police to detain an offender when they are unable to produce a driving license. These are minor traffic offenses that aren’t really worth mentioning for most people.

But Quay Evans isn’t most people.

I don’t know if Dan Mullen is going to do anything about this incident, and I really don’t believe that he should. I wouldn’t even be writing something about it if it had been another player that hasn’t had any issues on the team until this. But Quay Evans is trending towards being a five star prospect bust (I am not saying he is a bust but he is headed in that direction), and this doesn’t help. Now Mullen is going to have to answer questions about an insignificant event because Evans can’t seem to get his act together.

Here is the bigger picture problem for Evans. He started the year off suspended for the Oklahoma State game, and then he got suspended again for the Kentucky game. If you have a history of not being able to do what you are supposed to off the field, then you need to do everything you can to make sure you are avoiding any run ins with the law, no matter how minor or insignificant. Because it was Evans, every paper and website that covers Mississippi State had something about this posted yesterday.

There were rumors coming out of his high school days that Evans was supremely talented, but he had a penchant for getting himself involved in things that he didn’t need to be involved in and he would need to mature. I thought those rumors might have been dispelled when he graduated from high school a semester early so he could enroll at State and get a head start through Spring practices. Then came his suspensions this year, and I am beginning to believe that there may have been more truth to those rumors than I had thought.

The problem for Mississippi State is we need Evans. We need him to live up to every ounce of that potential that he was so heavily recruited for. When Chris Jones faxed in his Letter of Intent in February, Bulldog fans and coaches had dreams of Evans clogging running lanes and dragging down running backs in the backfield while Jones wreaked havoc on the outside with huge quarterback sacks. Jones has lived up to his end of the bargain and then some by playing anywhere the coaching staff felt they needed him. To the credit of Jones, he has used every opportunity to the best of his advantage, whether it be at Defensive Tackle or Defensive End. As good as he has been, just think of how good he could be if Evans was disrupting plays on the inside like we all thought he would.

I sincerely hope that Evans can get his act together. Mississippi State doesn’t typically get a ton of four and five star recruits, so when we do, we have to make sure they pan out the way they are supposed to. The last thing we need are distractions from big time recruits about insignificant things like this.