Lets Pump the Brakes on Shea Patterson

Five-star quarterback Shea Patterson of Shreveport, LA officially committed to the University of Mississippi this week, ending weeks of speculation of where he intends to spend his days in college.

Patterson, who plays for Calvary Baptist is rated by some the third best quarterback prospect in the country and for Mississippi, on paper it’s a huge get if his commitment stays firm.

I personally try not to get into recruiting until the fall, but after countless messages and tweets to me about the heralded signal caller, I decided to address it.

“What you gone do now meat?????  Ole Miss is taking over!!!”  “Hey whats Mullet gone do now??  Ole Miss is going to bury MSU“.  These are just a few samples of countless messages I got from random Johnny fan boys.

While five-star quarterbacks are great to get, let me remind you fan boys, they don’t always work out and specifically for Ole Miss or those out of the state of Louisiana.  I urge you zealous recruiting stalkers to pump the brakes on Shea Patterson.

I know the initial response is going to be “I’m jealous or you just wish Mullet could get five star quarterbacks”, but trust me that is hardly the case.  Dan Mullen has proven he can develop quarterbacks so I sleep like a baby at night when talking about the future of Mississippi State quarterbacks.

Back to Patterson – we should not be surprised that Ole Miss fan would throw a Mardi Gras like party over the 6-2 and 195 lb high school kid.  Ole Miss has been searching for the next great quarterback since Eli Manning left campus.  Since the departure of Manning back in 2003, Ole Miss has gone through 15-quarterbacks in hopes the next one would be the great one, and every time they have heralded him as “the one”.

Do we not remember Ethan Flatt and Michael Spurlock back in 2004 and how great they were going to be?  Or five star Louisiana native Robert Lane and his anointing to greatness?  Transfer Seth Adams was bound to light the SEC on fire then five-star transfer Brent Schaffer was destined to take the Rebels to the promise land.

Jevan Snead was the next best thing to honey wheat toast, then he was thrown under the bus after back to back Cotton Bowls.  Nathan Stanley, Billy Tapp and Raymond Cotton were going to make Alabama forget about football, while Jeremiah Massolli would win the Heisman.

Zach Stoudt is the son of NFL great Cliff Stoudt and he would have a banner hung next to Manning after he left Ole Miss and Barry Brunetti was going to run wild in Oxford.  Randall Mackey was going to be Cam Newton and Bo Wallace was a schizophrenic (you know good BO bad BO).  Of that list of 15 quarterbacks, three were five star quarterbacks and several were four-stars, with really only Wallace and Snead having any success. And now it looks as though the Rebels will go away from highly publicized quarterbacks Divante Kincaid and Ryan Buchanan.

While on paper, Patterson looks like a home run, this is hardly the case when talking about the state of Louisiana and high school quarterbacks.  Louisiana is known for producing top notch SEC talent, but has failed miserably when talking about quarterbacks.

Since 1999 there have been 12-high level 3-star to 5-star quarterbacks from the boot and only two have been worth their salt on the field and both happened to have played in the Magnolia State.  Eli Manning is the obvious one when thinking about Lousiana high school quarterbacks then its – you guessed it, Dak Prescott.

Manning is on the front end and Prescott on the back end and everyone in between has been basically abysmal.

Marcus Randal had a very sub-par career at LSU, while 5-star stud Brock Berlin bounced around the state of Florida having a dud career.  Surely everyone remembers 4-star air raid machine Brent Rawls who signed with Oklahoma or prep phenom Lester Ricard who left LSU to play at Tulane?

Ryan Perrilloux was supposed to be Vince Young before Vince Young and never got started good in Baton Rouge.  Steven Ensminger signed with Auburn and left the program, Jordan Jefferson could barely throw a forward pass at LSU and Zach Oliver went to Northwestern.  And of course we know how great Brandon Harris was at LSU this past season.

This is hardly a knock on Patterson as a quarterback because he may be the next Andrew Luck, but then again he might be the next Robert Lane.  Ole Miss has had success with only 13-percent of the quarterbacks they have signed since Eli Manning and only 16-percent of Louisiana prep quarterbacks have gone on to have good college careers, dating back to 1999.  When you run the numbers, it simply says pump the breaks on Patterson and see how he pans out.  Quarterbacks are the hardest position to project from one level to the next.

Nobody ever thought Chris Relf would be any kind of an SEC quarterback and all he did was go 17-10 as a starter, win two bowl games and go 3-0 in the Egg Bowl. And who would’ve thunk Dak Prescott would have two straight years where he is mentioned with the word “Heisman”.

All this is to say, you nor I really know how Patterson is gonna pan out, but if I were you, I’d be very cautious – the percentages sure don’t play into your favor.