Placing Jarrett Stidham on the all-breakout team for the 2017 college football season is nearly as trendy as picking Josh Allen, Wyoming's unknown-before-Adam-Schefter's-report quarterback, to be the No. 1 pick in the 2018 NFL Draft.
Stidham was a four-star recruit and Rivals' 97th-ranked player nationally when he joined Baylor in 2015. The true freshman from Stephenville, Texas, was pressed into duty when starter Seth Russell suffered a season-ending neck against Iowa State in October.
Stidham dazzled, completing 69 percent of his passes for 1,265 yards, 12 touchdowns and two interceptions, but was also lost for the season after an ankle injury against Oklahoma State four weeks later.
“You won’t hear that word come out of my mouth because that’s not how I view him,” Briles said after the "freshman" Stidham threw for 419 yards and three touchdowns in his first career start, a road win over Kansas State. “He’s pretty outstanding. And his physical talents are not quite the separating points as his mental awareness and instinctive awareness that he brings.”
Stidham left Baylor last July and sat out the 2016 season, only taking online courses at McLennan Community College to preserve his eligibility. In December, he transferred to Auburn. He's now Auburn's most talented quarterback since Cam Newton, and former Baylor safeties coach Cris Dishman is delivering huge praise to the Tigers' new signal-caller.
"We used to sit in our defensive meeting room at Baylor and be like 'OK, we've got one right here. We've got something special at quarterback,'" Dishman told Matt Zenitz of AL.com. "You knew he was going to a special-type player, so him being successful at Auburn doesn't surprise me at all."
Dishman, a former NFL All-Pro cornerback, said he's a "taller Drew Brees" and told a story of one throw shortly after Stidham arrived that made him realize Sitdham was a unique player.
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"I was like, 'OK, no other quarterback can make that throw,'" said Dishman. "I had to go back and watch it on film. And when I saw it on film, it was like, 'Whoa. This kid's going to be good.'"
It didn't take long for Stidham to leap over Sean White and Jonathan Franklin on Gus Malzahn's depth chart to work with the first-team offense in their spring game last month. The 6-foot-3, 214-pounder was lights-out, completing 16 of 20 passes for 267 yards and giving Auburn fans renewed hope that good quarterback play does exist.
