Dak Prescott does not hand out compliments to Mississippi State quarterbacks for fun. He was a two-time first-team All-SEC pick in Starkville and he has watched a decade of people try to be the next him. So when he stopped to rave about Kamario Taylor before the Cowboys played Washington on Sept. 20, that was worth paying attention to.
“I’m as excited about that program as I’ve ever been since I was playing,” Prescott said, praising Taylor’s mentality and his belief in himself, and what he has given Bulldogs fans back.
Here is the part that makes the hype real instead of nostalgic. The numbers back it up.
The Stats Are Not Fluff
Through three games Taylor has thrown for 832 yards with 11 touchdowns and one interception. His QBR sits at 88.9. Those are not padded-schedule numbers either, because one of those three wins came on the road against South Carolina in the SEC opener.
Eleven touchdowns to one pick in three games is the line that jumps out. Young quarterbacks having breakout Septembers usually do it with volume and a couple of ugly giveaways mixed in. Taylor has been careful and explosive at the same time, which is the combination that actually travels into October.
Mississippi State is 3-0, 1-0 in the SEC, and ranked No. 24 in the AP poll. For a program that has spent recent years as the team other SEC contenders circle as a breather, that is a real turn.
Missouri Is the Real Test
Saturday is when we find out what this is. No. 19 Missouri comes to Davis Wade Stadium at 6:45 p.m. on SEC Network, and the Tigers are undefeated too.
Two ranked, unbeaten SEC teams in Starkville at night. Mississippi State has not had a week like this in a long time, and the crowd is going to treat it accordingly.
The South Carolina win told us Taylor can handle a hostile road environment. Missouri tells us something different: whether he can handle being the favorite, the story, the guy everyone in the building came to see. Those are separate skills and plenty of quarterbacks only have one of them.
Missouri’s defense will also be the best group Taylor has faced. The one interception in three games is going to get stress-tested by a unit that can disguise coverage and get home with four.
Why the Prescott Comparison Works
The easy version of this story is that Taylor is the next Dak, and the easy version is usually wrong. Prescott was not a finished product as a sophomore either.
But the comparison holds in the way that matters most. Prescott’s value at Mississippi State was never only the arm. It was that he dragged a program with no natural recruiting advantage into games it had no business being in, and made the entire place believe. That is the exact thing Prescott said he sees in Taylor, and that is the exact thing happening in Starkville right now.
Beat Missouri and Mississippi State is 4-0 with a top-15 ranking and a quarterback nobody in the league wants to prepare for. Lose and it is still a good story, just a smaller one.
Take the Bulldogs at home. Taylor has not given anyone a reason to doubt him yet, and Davis Wade at night is going to be a problem for Missouri.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.