Ross Dellenger Helps Explain National Disconnect in the Ole Miss QB Race

All signs out of Oxford indicate that Matt Corral has a leg up on John Rhys Plumlee to win the Ole Miss quarterback job.All signs out of the national media seem to not give a damn.

All signs out of Oxford indicate that Matt Corral has a leg up on John Rhys Plumlee to win the Ole Miss quarterback job.

All signs out of the national media seem to not give a damn. 

Who's the most underrated team in the SEC? The Ole Miss Rebels. Watch this clip from @CBSSportsHQ to find out why pic.twitter.com/h3idF81X8Q

— Barrett Sallee 🇺🇸 (@BarrettSallee) September 1, 2020

There has already been a national coronation of John Rhys Plumlee as the Ole Miss starting quarterback by national television analysts and reporters. You can see it as evident in the clip above. Plumlee is mentioned as this electric threat that makes Ole Miss underrated, where Corral's name isn't mentioned at all.

But Plumlee likely won't even start. 

So why the disconnect? I asked Sports Illustrated's senior college football writer, and Mississippi native, Ross Dellenger to weigh in on the topic. 

"I think the national media, and certainly I'm at the top of this list, has been so inundated with COVID-19 stuff, that paying attention to depth charts and Xs and Os stuff has been put on the back burner," Dellenger said. "We're probably not as up-to-date and focused on that as we would be in a standard offseason."

Fair enough. There's been so much fluidity, uncertainty and wavering storylines surrounding COVID-19 and even playing a season, so it makes sense that studying teams isn't where it would be in a normal offseason. Hell, the Big Ten still has no idea what they're doing as far as fall football. 

(More on the Rebel QBs: First Ole Miss scrimmage paints picture of the next Ole Miss signal caller)

But going beyond COVID-19, Dellenger explained, is just a yearly occurrence of local people being just a hair more tied in to program details, especially with new staffs. It also doesn't help when the one player in the race struck gold late last season. 

"Anyone in the national media would admit you guys on the ground are always more up-to-date than us with depth charts and things like that," Dellenger said. "But more so, I think we're always attracted to the glamorous player and the flashy player. Certainly Plumlee is that and emerged as that last season.

"This glamorous, true freshman, exciting player comes in. That's a big part of it. It's not that the national media is rooting for him, but in their minds, he's the glamor boy and this really exciting player that everyone remembers from last year. We kind of just figured he'd take the reins."

However, John Rhys Plumlee really hasn't taken those reigns. 

Despite statements from Rebel defenders about how much better Plumlee has gotten at reading defenses and not being so quick to give up on plays, everything out of Lane Kiffin's mouth seems to indicate that Matt Corral is playing better, specifically taking care of the football better, than Plumlee through 2.5 weeks of training camp. 

Lastly, there's one overall reason that national reporters seem to not know what's going on in Oxford – they simply haven't had a reason to care in a few years. 

"In general, I'm just not sure how tuned in the national media is to Ole Miss right now. They've been sort of absent from the national platform, as far as their success," Dellenger said. "Until that returns, you're going to see the national media not be as in tune with specifics down in Oxford."

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