How Far Can Ole Miss Go in Year 3 of QB Jaxson Dart? History Says Rather Far
Ole Miss Rebels quarterback Jaxson Dart is set to enter some unique territory in Oxford as the calendar turns to the 2024 season.
Dart will be entering his third year in an Ole Miss uniform as the team's starting quarterback, and that trend is rare in itself. If you throw in the current landscape of NIL and the transfer portal, however, it's even more rare.
In fact, even before the advent of the portal, it wasn't very common for Ole Miss to have a quarterback who finished his collegiate career with three years of starting experience in Oxford under his belt. Here is a list of quarterbacks this millennium who have fallen in that category:
1. Eli Manning (2000-03)
2. Bo Wallace (2012-14)
3. Matt Corral (2018-21)
Those numbers in parenthesis indicate the years this player was on campus, not just years where they were the standard "starting quarterback," but the point remains the same. Just three times since the turn of the century have the Rebels had a quarterback start for two seasons in Oxford and return for a third.
That should be promising, right? Let's take a look at the jump each of these signal callers made from Year 2 to 3.
Eli Manning
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2002 season: 3,401 passing yards, 21 touchdowns, 15 interceptions
2003 season: 3,600 passing yards, 29 touchdowns, 10 interceptions, third in Heisman voting
What's most remarkable about Manning's jump isn't necessarily the stat line (although that did improve), but Ole Miss' season as a whole. In 2002, Ole Miss finished with a record of 7-6 and 3-5 in the SEC, and while it did win the Independence Bowl over Nebraska, that's definitely not the definition of performing at an "elite" level.
The 2003 campaign? The Rebels finished at 10-3 and 7-1 in the SEC, taking home a 31-28 win in the Cotton Bowl over Oklahoma State. Oh, that that was the first 10-win season at Ole Miss since 1971.
Manning's play elevated in '03, but so did his team's play. That can be viewed as even more important.
Bo Wallace
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2013 season: 3,346 passing yards, 18 touchdowns, 10 interceptions
2014 season: 3,194 passing yards, 22 touchdowns, 14 interceptions
Well, those stat lines are comparable, and Wallace was famous (or infamous) for his "Good Bo, Bad Bo" cycle while at Ole Miss. Like Manning, however, the biggest step came in the team's performance as a whole between the two years.
The 2013 Ole Miss Rebels finished with a mark of 8-5 (3-5 SEC) and a win in the Music City Bowl over Georgia Tech. Had the Rebels been able to escape Starkville with a win, that bowl placement likely would have been improved, but that's not a dreadful campaign. It's just not that great, either.
The 2014 team took the college football world by storm (before an unceremonious collapse), reaching the first-ever installment of the College Football Playoff rankings and finishing with a berth in the Peach Bowl (which went very poorly against TCU). Still, that team finished 9-4 and 5-3 within the conference, and after starting the year 7-0, that's a clear step forward, collapse included.
Matt Corral
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2020 season: 3,337 passing yards, 29 touchdowns, 14 interceptions
2021 season: 3,349 passing yards, 20 touchdowns, five interceptions, seventh in Heisman voting
Corral is perhaps the poster child for a Year 2-to-3 jump at Ole Miss. Not only did he take much better care of the football (does anyone remember the 2020 Arkansas game?), but his team went from a 5-5 COVID-impacted finish to a 10-3 record and a berth in the Sugar Bowl.
Had Corral not gone down with an injury in New Orleans that night, the Rebels could have finished at 11-2.
Jaxson Dart already took a noticeable jump in his second and third year total of college football, but if these trends indicate anything, it's that the longer you're in the starting quarterback role, the more your team buys in. The more your team buys in, the higher the ceiling can be in a given season.
It's obvious that the Ole Miss locker room believes in Dart's grit and leadership, but after an 11-2 season in 2023, just how high can the Rebels go in the fall? If Dart has anything to say about it, pretty high.
