Ole Miss Football: Do You Play Shea Patterson Now?

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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The Ole Miss football team lost their starting quarterback on Saturday when Chad Kelly went down with a torn ACL and torn lateral meniscus, so what now?

The Ole Miss football team took its final blow to the 2016 season on Saturday when they lost Chad Kelly, starting quarterback of the Ole Miss Rebels.

Redshirt freshman quarterback Jason Pellerin will be taking the starting snaps against Texas A&M on Saturday, and most likely for the rest of the season.

But the question at hand does not involve either of those two quarterbacks, it involves a 5-star freshman named Shea Patterson out of IMG Academy.

Patterson committed to the Rebels over LSU in February of 2015, and held firm on his commitment, eventually signing with the Rebels in December 2015.

Ole Miss has stated that they were attempting to redshirt Shea Patterson during the 2016 season, most likely due to the fact that the Rebels had Chad Kelly returning to the team.

But now that Chad is gone, do you start the freshman with three games to go in a season?

In my opinion, no. Stay away from Shea Patterson. Patterson is a talent that comes around once in a lifetime.

Let him learn under Pellerin for the rest of the season, and then have them compete for the job in 2017.

The season is essentially over already, as a team that is 4-5 and still has three SEC games left on their schedule.

Ole Miss will most likely miss a bowl game this season, even with Patterson as the quarterback. That defense is not stopping A&M, Vanderbilt, or Mississippi State.

Most fans will bring up the argument that Patterson will be gone after three seasons no matter what, but if what I am hearing is true, Patterson will be in Oxford longer than any of use realize.

Now that is not due to him not being as talented as we expected, it is him setting expectations for himself in his collegiate career that will take time to achieve, and that Ole Miss should do anything they can to help Patterson out with these goals.

I ran a Twitter poll on the Ole Hotty Toddy account and asked fans to vote if Ole Miss should use Patterson this season. Here are the early results.

Only four hours after the poll was posted, a resounding 603 votes have been cast. Of those 603, 65% believe that Patterson should stay redshirted and not play this season.

I agree with the fanbase at this point. There is no reason to burn a redshirt to salvage a potential 6-6 season, I don’t care how good the kid is supposed to be.

Save him for next season, where he can play with DK Metcalf, AJ Brown, and most likely Cam Akers.

Patterson is going to compete for a Heisman at Ole Miss, but it isn’t happening in 2016.