It wasn’t supposed to be like this for Ole Miss. Sure, they had holes to fill, but they had far and away the most stable quarterback situation in the conference and a load of talent from several years of Hugh Freeze’s elite recruiting.
Now, at 4-5 with three games to go, a team once considered a potential top 10 outfit has lost that quarterback to injury and is starting down the barrel at missing one of college football’s 700 bowl games because they couldn’t get to six wins.
Looking for a pick-me-up? Yeah, probably.
Winds out of Oxford are blowing that the Rebels could take the redshirt off of former 5-star quarterback Shea Patterson and see what they’ve got in him. The highly heralded Patterson is expected to do large, large things at the college football level, but does it make sense to roll him out there with three games left?
If you think “no,” just consider that if Patterson hits the ground running, you’ll only get possibly two years out of him anyhow. Yeah, it seems silly to take the redshirt off of a guy with three games left in a swirling down the drain season, but if Ole Miss can sneak out wins over two of Texas A&M, Vanderbilt, and rival Mississippi State, they’ll achieve a bowl game and get the extra few weeks of practice that go along with it while knowing a little more about what they have in Patterson.
The downside is, obviously, you’re blowing the redshirt that you’d already built in to let him have that extra year of eligibility.
If you’re on the “yes” side, you must want to see what you have in the guy, maybe uncover a gem, and give some hope going into the end of this season and 2017.
You can make the case aptly for both sides.
But if the rumors are true, it’s going to happen, and Ole Miss will have a unique opportunity to breathe some hope for the future baked into a season of disappointment that culminated with three consecutive losses in October and the loss of Chad Kelly.
Ole Miss could really use the bowl game (contrary to the thought that having 700 bowl games doesn’t matter … it does), and if Patterson gives them the best chance to win, they should go ahead and do it. At worst, you miss a bowl game and get to see what you’ve got in Patterson in a live environment.
At best, you make a bowl game and the young fella is a revelation, igniting hope for the future of Ole Miss football, where once again, dreams of a top 10 ranking and challenging for the SEC West title pop up in 2017 … and last into October and November, like this year was always supposed to.
