The 2024 Ole Miss quarterback room is as deep, good as any Rebels room in the last 65 years
Jaxson Dart – one of the most productive Ole Miss quarterbacks ever. Three-year starter, counting 2024. He was the Gatorade National Player of the Year out of high school. Named All-American in high school by Sports Illustrated.
Walker Howard – 4-star transfer from LSU. Named nation’s best dual-threat QB out of high school by ESPN and an Elite 11 participant.
Austin Simmons – arm talent galore, redshirt freshman. Also, a consensus 4-star QB. Recruited by most of the powers of college football.
AJ Maddox – true freshman and also a 4-star recruit. Grandson of Southern Mississippi star Reggie Collier.
That’s just a cursory look at their prowess, but the star power alone in the Rebel quarterback room made me wonder, has Ole Miss – known historically for very good quarterback play – ever had a deeper quarterback room?
With due respect to Charlie Conerly, Parker Hall and some others prior to 1958, that is where our research began and right off the bat, in ’58, the Rebels could boast of Bobby Ray Franklin, Jake Gibbs and Billy Brewer on the same roster. That set the bar very high for my search.
It got one very fine player stronger in ’59 with the ’58 trio returning and adding Doug Elmore to the mix. It was a different era of football then, with not nearly as much passing as now, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a better foursome than Franklin, Gibbs, Brewer and Elmore.
In 1960, the prolific threesome of Gibbs, Elmore and Glynn Griffing would make any quarterback room look special. All three were named All-Americans at some point in their Rebel careers. Let me repeat that – all three, All-Americans.
In ’61, Emore and Griffing added Perry Lee Dunn to the room and in ’62 Griffing played with the singing quarterback, Jimmy Weatherly. In ’63 it was mostly Dunn and Weatherly, a quality duo.
With respect to the Rebel quarterbacks between ’65 and ’68, the next heavy hitter was All-American Archie Manning and Shug Chumbler holding down the fort for three seasons. Manning is still revered in Rebel land and probably always will be.
The trio of Norris Weese, Kenny Lyons and Shug in ’71 was very good and in ’72, Shug was gone and those two added Greenwood high school star Bill Malouf, who many thought was the second coming of Archie.
In ’73, it was Weese, Lyons, Stan Bounds and Malouf. That’s certainly a quality foursome on any team. In ’74, Tim Ellis was added to Lyons and Malouf and in ’76 it was Ellis, Bobby Garner, Roy Coleman and David Coates. In ’78, gunslinger John Fourcade joined Garner and Coleman under center for the Rebels.
In 1981, Kent Austin and Kelly Powell were added to senior Fourcade and Austin and Powell would command the next two seasons with Kent taking over with David McKinney in ’84 and Mark Young and prep All-American Chris Osgood added to Austin and McKinney in ’85.
Young and John Darnell closed out the 80s along with youngsters Russ Shows and Tom Luke handling the early 90s. ’94 and ’95 saw Josh Nelson take control and in ’96 and ’97 Stew Patridge was the main man.
1998-2000, it was the Romaro Miller-David Morris show, but then another Manning popped on the scene from 2000-2003. Eli was strong enough to be the first player chosen in the 2004 NFL draft.
After Manning, it was guys like Ethan Flatt, Robert Lane, Michael Spurlock, the highly-touted Brent Schaeffer and Seth Adams – who all flashed but had trouble sustaining much consistency with some of the inconsistency being attributed to the overall team talent they played on.
Enter the late Jevan Snead, who elevated the QB play back to where it belonged for two Cotton Bowl seasons, but even though Jeremiah Masoli, Nathan Stanley, Randall Mackey, Barry Brunetti and Zach Stoudt tried to carry the torch, it didn’t shine brightly again until Bo Wallace hooked up with Brunetti and Mackey in 2012-13.
Chad Kelly was prolific in 2015 and in 2016 Kelly was joined by prep All-American Shea Patterson. In ’17, Jordan Ta’Amu joined Patterson and in ’18 Matt Corral joined Ta’Amu. When Jordan graduated, Corral and John Rhys Plumlee took over in 2019 and 2020. In ’21, it was Corral, Plumlee and Luke Altmyer – a very good trio.
Which brings us back to Dart, who also had Spencer Sanders and Walker Howard on board last season when the Rebels won 11 games for the first time in school history.
As you can readily see, Ole Miss has been blessed with a lot of very good quarterbacks and also some very good quarterback rooms.
But in this opinion – for what it is worth – the Ole Miss quarterback room has not seen the quality top-to-bottom depth since 1959 with Jake Gibbs, Bobby Ray Franklin, Billy Brewer and Doug Elmore and it would be hard to top the 1960 group of Gibbs, Elmore and Griffing, who, again, were all All-Americans.
Can you think of any Ole Miss quarterback room room that is as deep and good as ’24? I only found two that I thought were comparable.
Give me your thoughts.
The post The 2024 Ole Miss quarterback room is as deep, good as any Rebels room in the last 65 years appeared first on On3.
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