Jarrett Stidham’s voyage from Stephenville, Texas to Foxborough, Mass. was a long one marked by numerous changes of fortune.
When Stidham was nine years old he relocated to central Texas with his mother and older brother. At 18, he left home and moved in with Matt and Katy Copeland, a Stephenville couple who own several college apparel stores in Iowa, Texas, and Florida. The talented young athlete was not raised int he greatest of circumstances and his personal life is not a topic he divulges on. He relied on football for comfort long before the Copleands accepted him as one of their own. This is where his journey begins.
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(Jarrett Stidham and his wife Kennedy pictured with Katy and Matt Copeland in 2018)
“I probably love the kid even more because his home dynamics were so rough,” former Stephenville High School football coach Joseph Gillespie said about Stidham. Before he became The University of Tulsa’s defensive coordinator, Gillespie served as Stephenville’s athletic director and head football coach for seven years. It was during his seven year career at Stephenville that Gillespie realized he had caught lightning in a bottle with Jarrett Stidham.
Stidham began his playing career at Stephenville as a wide receiver. By the time he was a sophomore he’d already received multiple Division I offers to play quarterback. The Yellowjackets went on to win the state championship Stidham’s sophomore year, during which Gillespie said, “Jarrett never complained once. He handled it with grace, and that’s hard to do at that age.”
Stidham earned the starting quarterback job as a senior in 2014. He finished his high school career with 2,934 total passing yards for 35 touchdowns as well as 969 rushing yards for 15 touchdowns. Gillespie credited the Copelands for helping Stidham thrive. The road from wide receiver to starting quarterback wasn’t an easy one, but Gillespie says, “if it weren’t for them it would have been a rougher road.”
By the spring of 2015, Stidham was classified by Rivals.com as the sixth-best dual-threat quarterback in his class which caught the eye of former Stephenville football coach Art Briles who was the head coach of Baylor at the time. By the summer it was official, the 4-star quarterback was leaving Stephenville to play football at Baylor.
At the start of his true freshman season Stidham was playing as the backup to Seth Russell. Stidham saw action in the first seven games before he took over as the starter when Russell suffered a season-ending neck injury. Stidham started for Baylor in three games before an ankle injury sidelined him for the remainder of the season.
And then all hell broke loose.
In 2016, a scathing report revealed that much of Baylor University’s football staff had failed to take disciplinary action surrounding alleged rape and sexual assault allegations made against three Baylor football players. The scandal saw the end of Briles’ tenure at the school as well as the destruction of the program’s reputation. After all of this and an unsatisfactory freshman season, Stidham left and transferred to McLennan Community College.
Stidham attended McLennan for only one season before he announced he would be transferring to Auburn. McLennan did not have a football program, so to sharpen his skills he asked Midway High School’s football coach Jeff Hulme if it would be okay to sharpen his skills at their practice field. Hulme obliged and Stidham showed up to the field every day before practice began.
The 6-foot-3, 215-pound quarterback would’ve liked to have flown under the radar the entire semester, but when a mysterious NFL caliber athlete shows up on a high school practice field in Texas it’s going to cause mass hysteria.
Which it did.
Hulme honored Stidham’s wishes to remain incognito as long as possible, but when school started the coach had to reveal Stidham’s identity to quell any surrounding gossip. After his secret was revealed Stidham continued to practice his skills on Midway’s scout team. It was an experience that proved to be beneficial in readying Stidham for his SEC arrival.
As a redshirt sophomore, Stidham won the starting quarterback job at Auburn. In his first season he went on to win the SEC West after defeating both Georgia and Alabama who were both ranked number one at the time. He finished the season with 3,158 passing yards which places him second all-time behind Dameyune Craig in Auburn’s single season passing leaders.
Former Auburn offensive coordinator Chip Lindsey compared Stidham to former Auburn quarterback Cam Newton and said that Stidham is just “wired the right way,” and that he “ran the gauntlet in the SEC.” As Stidham entered his junior year, many thought he was a first-round draft pick and a potential Heisman contender, but things didn’t quite come together like they should’ve that season. After finishing the year with a convincing bowl win, Stidham declared for the 2019 NFL Draft and was selected by the New England Patriots in the fourth round.
Auburn head coach Gus Malzahn says New England is just the place Stidham wants to be:
“This is what he’s been wanting. He’s been looking forward to the moment. It’s really not any deeper than that. If you’d given Jarrett a choice in the matter, I bet he would have picked New England and hoped to follow Tom Brady.”
Chip Lindsey’s comparison of Stidham to Newton only gets better with the two competing against each other in New England’s quarterback race. ESPN’s Tim Keown details his prediction of Stidham’s future:
“If Stidham doesn’t take over for Brady this season (assuming there is one), there’s a good chance he will in 2021. At just 31, Newton is looking to put together a season that creates one more big contract, which means if he’s good he’ll be too expensive and if he’s bad he’ll be on his own. Which will, one more time, direct the focus back to Stidham.”
Whenever the moment arrives it won’t be one that is too big for Jarrett Stidham. The road he took from Stephenville, Texas hit a road bump at Baylor, took a detour at Midway, and merged onto the expressway in Auburn that would eventually send him 1,173 miles north to Foxborough, Massachusetts. In total Stidham has traveled 2,032 miles to be where he is today.
“The quarterback from Texas” as he is affectionately known by Auburn fans and one dimensional sports broadcasters everywhere is reportedly putting up a tough fight against Newton in the NFL’s most watched quarterback race. New quarterback race developments here.
Fighting for his dreams isn’t a foreign concept to Jarrett Stidham, it’s what he’s been doing all of his life.