Facts About Ryan Mallett

Does not look at all like Billy Idol.

OMG. Shirtless. I can find no better way to summarize Ryan Mallet's assets than this from John Miller of the Dallas-Fort Worth Star-Telegram, which must have the nation's most unwieldly newspaper name:

Uncle Rico boasted he could once throw a football a quarter-mile and wanted to bet that he could throw the pigskin over a mountain in the movie Napoleon Dynamite.

No one's come anywhere close to that.

But give Ryan Mallett a few years, and who knows what could happen?

The article continues on in that vein: Mallet throws a ball 70 yards in the air, dislocated two fingers on one of his wideout's hands, can throw it "40-50 yards" on a line, shoots lasers from his eyes, etc. He's in Rivals' and (Lemming warning) Lemming's early top ten, is a sure bet for five-star status, and can fix back pain with well-placed throws from the next county.

Two Ts. Just FYI.

Active during the war. On August 4th, 1941, a U-boat sunk a critical shipment of gunpowder destined for the shipyards of London. Private First Class Ryan Mallett was enlisted to hurl flak at incoming bombers, downing six and preserving an orphanage full of strippers. Four years later, he killed Hitler with a well-placed fifteen-yard out.

Sort of like that one other giant white guy... whatshisface. But what about the supposedly-dread spectre of John Navarre? At first glance, the two quarterbacks seem... similar. Hell, this is the second sentence in ESPN's talent evaluation($) of Mallett:

He reminds us of former Michigan QB John Navarre in terms of build and physical tools.

Holy cats! We can look forward to another four years of a giant quarterback with no scrambling ability and a tendency to hurl passes into the kneecaps of onrushing linemen! Abort! Abort!

...or maybe not. This blog came into existence after the Navarre era ended, but had it been around then no doubt I would have pissed off 90 to 95 percent of potential readers with fervent defenses of the Water Buffalo Wonder. Hell, I'm the guy who wrote this article...

John Navarre Blamed For Offense, Defense, Kicking Game, Iraq, 9/11, Everything Else

...after the hilariously mishap-ful 2002 season. By the tail end of Navarre's junior year, he was a very good quarterback. I distinctly remember the 2002 OSU game's offense as two idiotic runs into the teeth of the defense followed by heroic, laser-accurate third-and-long conversions from Navarre. He wasn't Brady, but he was okay by me. The 2003 offense was a machine of epic destruction, and it was helmed by John Navarre. Not bad for a guy recruited as a defensive end by a lot of schools and possessing only one other quarterback offer, that from Northwestern.

So. Take the nonexistent hype surrounding Navarre and turn it up to 11. Turn Navarre from a guy two schools thought could play quarterback maybe to a guy who's going to get the precious fifth star from both recruiting services okay no problem. This... sounds appealing.

You may remember Mallett from such quarterbacks as: other than Navarre your two most cited names are Drew Bledsoe and Ben Roethlisberger, if those are more palatable.

This is not Ryan Mallett. Well, it is, but not that one.

A mysterious traveller. Little is known about Mallett's past -- he was found on the doorstep of Texas High three years ago, swaddled in (copious) rags, clutching a football and quietly muttering about a fusion reactor's backwards flux inhibitor. He asked if there were any games in town similar to the high-paced flarlax he knew and loved so well. After some discussion, it was determined that football was in many way analagous to flarlax... flarlax played by bleeble-babes! Mallett found the game piteously easy -- flarxlax stripped of flaming ninja hordes, roving black holes, and the dread joydlerox is hardly flarlax at all -- but it is the only thing that soothes his raging homesickness for his mysterious homeland... or is it -world?

"Mallett" antonym: "Vick." And he knows it. Mallett on his running ability:

"I can't run at all."

Sounds like we're going to have to radically change our offense to take advantage of his abilities yes this is sarcasm. Except we probably don't have any 70 yard routes in the playbook.

More on what mortals call an arm from that article:

"He's probably got the strongest arm in the history of Texas high school football," said Bobby Burton, Rivals.com recruiting expert.

Emphasis mine.

Coming relatively near relatively soon. Cincinnati-area readers with an obsessive urge can see Mallett play Findlay High at (hur hur) Nippert Stadium on September 15th. Any reports/pictures/video offered will be posted with all haste.

Committing to someone any time now. Who could it be?

Update: Done be us.