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The most impressive thing about Austin Simmons will become the new ‘Ryan Williams is 17’ broadcast note of 2025
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Austin Simmons could get benched in his first career college start and I’d still be incredibly impressed with what he’s already accomplished.
The new Ole Miss starting quarterback has massive shoes to fill after first-round quarterback Jaxson Dart left his name all over the record books in Oxford. Time will tell if the southpaw can live up to some growing offseason hype in what’s proven to be a quarterback-friendly offense under Lane Kiffin.
But let’s back up a second because we sped right past that first part. That is, “what he’s already accomplished.”
At 19 years old, Simmons already has his college degree. In May, he graduated from Ole Miss with a bachelor’s degree in multidisciplinary studies.
Let’s back up another second because we sped right past the first part of that, too. That is, “at 19 years old, Simmons is a college graduate.”
Simmons is the same guy who made headlines 2 years ago in June 2023 when he reclassified from the 2025 class to the 2023 class. That absurd 2-year jump also included a flip from Florida to Ole Miss, where he planned on playing both football and baseball. After 2024, Simmons put baseball on the back burner and gone all in with playing quarterback, but he still held the title of “2-sport SEC athlete” in his freshman year.
One more time, let’s back up just so we have the full context of what Simmons did because when this is inevitably brought up on every Ole Miss broadcast, you’re gonna want to know what exactly made this insanely impressive.
If Simmons had stayed in the 2025 class and played high baseball through the spring, he still wouldn’t be enrolled at Ole Miss yet. Instead, he expedited his path and earned a college degree in 2 years, much of which was spent being a 2-sport athlete.
Move over “Ryan Williams is 17” broadcast note. You’ve got company in 2025.
If you’re curious how in the world Simmons already pulled off that academic feat, CBS Sports wrote a piece on it that outlined that it actually dated back to middle school. Here’s an excerpt from that story from Brandon Marcello:
Simmons’ advanced academic pace as a youngster started because of baseball. Fearing he may not eclipse 6-feet, his father focused on developing him as a southpaw pitcher. To better prepare him as an athlete, and the possibility of being drafted to play baseball before enrolling in college, he began high school coursework at home in middle school.
Well, Simmons is now listed at 6-4, so he won’t have to worry about not eclipsing 6 feet. And with a high school GPA of 5.34 (!), Simmons knocked out all his coursework by the time he was 16 … when he was also training with NFL players.
You know. Standard stuff.
It already feels like a forgettable footnote last fall that Simmons beat out the elder Walker Howard, who was seen as the next Kiffin quarterback star when he left LSU for Ole Miss after his freshman season in Jan. 2023. Walker was a decorated class of 2022 recruit who was expected to wait behind Jaxson Dart and Oklahoma State transfer Spencer Sanders in 2023, but then assume the backup role in 2024. Simmons, as he’s been known to do, changed up that schedule even though he was 2-plus years younger than Howard.
“For any of us who watched practice, it was clear that Austin Simmons was better than Walker Howard,” said Michael Katz, who covers Ole Miss for the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal (H/T The Saturday Down South Podcast). “It was just, are you gonna have the cojones to put it on the depth chart and tell (Howard), ‘Hey, you’re not the guy. Hit the portal.'”
Kiffin did indeed have the cojones to make that move. Howard became QB3 and ultimately, he hit the portal, while Simmons got a chance to deliver what was arguably the biggest drive of Ole Miss’s season after Dart was briefly sidelined against Georgia. After UGA injured and picked off Dart on the first series, Simmons stepped in and calmed the storm that appeared to be brewing. He completed 5-of-6 passes for 64 yards en route to a 75-yard Ole Miss touchdown drive. Never mind the fact that to that point, he had attempted just 24 career passes, only 3 of which came vs. Power Conference competition. Simmons sped right past the part where he was supposed to look like an overwhelmed redshirt freshman.
(Yes, even though he’s 4 inches taller, the Tua Tagovailoa comp is striking. Simmons even came off the bench and helped come back against Georgia … just sayin’.)
That set the wheels in motion for what turned out to be a blowout victory. At the time, it felt like it was going to launch Ole Miss into the Playoff for the first time. Beyond that Georgia drive, Simmons didn’t get to have a say in that in 2024. He’ll absolutely have a say in that in 2025.
With a roster that ranks No. 113 in FBS in percentage of returning production, nobody will be tabbing Ole Miss as a Playoff team. At least not like they were last year. Even though the schedule sets up well again — there’s only 1 road game against a team with a winning record — the preseason outlook will be that it’s a transition year for a program that just lost 5 defensive players to the NFL Draft, as well as the program’s first Round 1 quarterback since Eli Manning. Nobody will be surprised if an 8-4 season awaits.
But at this point, nobody should be surprised if Simmons is once again operating ahead of schedule.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
