When Brent Vigen and Grady Bennett are saying the same things about a kid, it's probably worth paying attention. I don't think the comparisons to Troy Andersen hold water, but there's another comparison that make sense to me. And so my dear friends and brothers, cozy up to the fire with a cup of hot chocolate with the small marshmallows, and listen to my story. This is the story of a player that's was known in some parts as the 'Lad with a Russian Sounding Name'.
It all started in 2013 fall camp, the final year of Denarius McGhee. In a scrimmage I attended a scrimmage and witnessed something extraordinary. A young RS freshman wearing the #5 took a zone read that should have been a loss of 4 yards to the house in a blink of an eye. About 4 different defenders had very good leverage and should have limited the play to about 8 yards, but this #5 with a funny name flatly outran nearly every player in backend, and it wasn’t even close. Somebody asked Rob Ash about this kid in an interview and the answer was very concise: he’s not ready to play QB at this level. As electric as the kid was with his feet, he was still unable to throw a football through his RS freshman year.
Fast forward to spring of 2014, there was an intense competition between three guys: the Russian Lad, Jake Bleskin, and Quinn McQueary. It wasn't clear who was QB1 coming out of spring, but then over the follow summer, something happened to the #5. He went to at least one elite QB camp and came away with improved mechanics and better decision making, and around the second scrimmage the following fall, he became QB1 and never looked back.
Tommy Mellott isn’t a complete QB yet, but I am quite confident he will be. He is (technically) a true freshman and only got QB4 reps through fall camp. As it was, he spent most of the fall camp on special teams. His reps as QB leading up to this playoff game didn’t include any packages other than Tommy right and Tommy left. He has had only two weeks to learn a more comprehensive package ahead of his first start, and needless to say, the conditions were awful for throwing the ball. This week will be better, and the marginal (at best) SHSU secondary shouldn’t sleep on this kid. Although many over here want to believe otherwise, Tommy Mellott gives this Bobcat football team a chance to win next Saturday.
Next year I suspect he’ll compete in the fall and slowly emerge as QB1 with a much more balanced skill set. Exactly like another kid did as he came into his sophomore season.
As I like saying over here to great effect…it’s all part of the plan.