Every July, SEC Media Days produces a fresh batch of quarterback praise, and most of it fades fast. Jeff Lebby’s comments in Tampa on Thursday landed differently, though, because they came from a coach who has actually spent real time around the kind of player he was describing.
When asked whether any quarterback he had coached or watched reminded him of Kamario Taylor, the Mississippi State head coach pointed straight to one name.
"Yeah, I think the closest comparison obviously is RG3 and our time at Baylor," Lebby said. "The athleticism, the ability to throw the football down the field and the arm talent. I think that's the closest comparison that I've seen with my eyes in practice every day and on Saturdays."
Lebby’s Baylor background matters here. He joined that staff in 2008 and stayed nine seasons, beginning as an offensive quality control assistant before moving on to running backs coach and then passing game coordinator. He was there in 2011, when Robert Griffin III won the Heisman Trophy.
That gives the comparison some weight. RG3 gets name-dropped all the time, usually by people who never actually saw him up close. Lebby did.
Taylor, a 6-foot-4 sophomore from Macon, Mississippi, gave Mississippi State a glimpse of what makes him so intriguing last season. He played in 11 games and started the final two, completing just 77 passes for 629 yards and five touchdowns while also running for 458 yards and eight scores. He was named SEC Freshman of the Week twice, including in Week 14 against Ole Miss.
The numbers tell you how little was asked of him as a passer. They also show how much damage he could do anyway.
Taylor ran for more yards than plenty of SEC backs manage in a season, and he did it in basically two starts and a pile of spot duty. The real test still hasn’t arrived: what happens when the volume jumps.
Lebby also described the first time he met Taylor, and it came in a high school gym in Noxubee County after he took the Mississippi State job.
"My first impression was he's really athletic, and he's really gifted from a body type standpoint," Lebby said. "I walked in the gym there in Noxubee County, and he was in the gym.
That was the first time I met him. And he's shooting it around, throwing it down in slides.
And I said, quit playing basketball, young man."
Lebby isn’t the only one talking up Taylor. Nick Saban said on SEC Now that Taylor is a guy nobody has really heard much about at Mississippi State and that he could be the truth.
That kind of endorsement carries plenty of weight, especially for a quarterback at a program coming off a 5-8 season and a loss to Wake Forest in the Duke's Mayo Bowl. Mississippi State’s defense finished second-to-last in the SEC in scoring, and the problems showed up in seven-point home losses to Texas and Tennessee.
The schedule won’t make life easier. Mississippi State has Alabama and Oklahoma coming to Starkville, has to go to LSU and Texas, and closes the regular season at Ole Miss. There’s also a non-conference road trip to Minnesota.
Lebby is 7-18 at Mississippi State over two seasons, which explains why optimism around Taylor has become such a loud conversation point. The talent is obvious. The arm talent, the athleticism, the way he can stress a defense with his legs - all of that is already on display.
What still isn’t known is the biggest thing of all: how Taylor looks when he’s asked to carry an offense for a full season against SEC defenses. That’s the question hanging over Starkville.
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