Michigan Football: Is Shea Patterson receiving too much hype?

Shea Patterson is receiving so much hype months before he’ll make his Michigan Football debut.

All the Michigan Football hype, rumors, and updates have essentially revolved around Shea Patterson this offseason. How can they not though? The Wolverines and Jim Harbaugh may have acquired the most talented quarterback they’ve had in years. To many people in the Michigan Football community, this is automatically a big win. Sure he’s the best quarterback this program has seen in quite some time, but many people don’t realize that he hasn’t actually done anything in a winged helmet yet. This leaves us to wonder whether Shea is receiving too much offseason hype.

Lets start by talking about why Shea is receiving all this hype in the first place. The main reason is his talent and skill set. 247sports ranked Shea as the No. 4 overall recruit in the class of 2016. Like I mentioned earlier, Michigan hasn’t had such a highly ranked quarterback coming out of high school in a long time.

A lot of the attention has also come from his whole eligibility situation. After Ole Miss misled Shea about the extent of some NCAA penalties, he hired a lawyer to gain immediate eligibility at Michigan. The NCAA eventually caved, deeming him eligible for the 2018 season.

Shea has also proven himself as a successful quarterback at his previous school. At Ole Miss he threw for 3,139 yards and 23 touchdowns. His highlight reel is impressive to say the least.

It’s really easy to sit here and imagine how much Patterson will improve this offense. Regardless of what he can do for a team, there are still some reasons why Shea is over-hyped.

Lets breakdown Shea’s performance on a week-to-week basis when he was at Ole Miss. He averaged 313 passing yard and over two touchdowns per game, which is surely proficient. What people don’t know is that Shea’s only played 10 games at the collegiate level. In those ten games he’s thrown 12 interceptions and fumbled the ball 8 times. It’s pretty clear that he’s going to take chances and give the ball away frequently, just like he did at Ole Miss.

Patterson has been compared to Johnny Manziel because they often scramble out of the pocket and run around in the backfield to extend plays. Knowing Michigan’s offense, I’m confused on why this would be a good thing. Both Manziel and Patterson ran a spread offense which gave them more freedom to escape the pocket and play the role of an athlete.

Shea will be asked to lineup under center and drop back in the pocket. Jim Harbaugh doesn’t need or want his quarterback to be frequently scrambling around in the backfield, trying to make tacklers miss. This puts the quarterback in a position to get injured and/or create turnovers.

I’m slightly puzzled that Patterson is assumed to be the starter already. Harbaugh has confirmed that all four quarterbacks will be equally competing for the spot this summer. Brandon Peters and Dylan McCaffrey have been familiar with this offense for some time now. They’ve also committed to being a part of this team for years, while Patterson is just showing up from a different school. What quarterback recruit is going to want to come to Michigan if transfers are always showing up to steal their job?

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I’m the type of person that doesn’t join the hype train until it’s real. It’s kind of pointless to get so excited about something that’s not even set in stone yet. I’m not saying that Patterson won’t be Michigan’s next great quarterback, but praise should come with accomplishment. It won’t be until at least Sept 1 that we discover whether this hype is real.