Ole Miss football recruiting: Can Ole Miss flip Luke Altmyer away from Florida State?

Luke Altmyer, a four-star senior quarterback from Starkville, Miss., committed to Mike Norvel and Kenny Dillingham way back when in February. Since then, he has competed in the Elite 11 Finals in Nashville and has set 6A Mississippi football on fire in just five short weeks. The Starkville High School signal caller has already broken a school record.

In a dominating 41-7 victory over Germantown (Miss.), the nation’s No. 11 pro-style quarterback completed 31-of-45 passes for 426 yards and five touchdowns, breaking Brady Davis’ six-year old record of 411 yards.

The next thing Altmyer breaks could be Seminole fans’ hearts.

Lane Kiffin and Jeff Lebby have been adamant that Altmyer is their No. 1 target at quarterback since they arrived on campus and now that their offense is on full display with Matt Corral at the helm, the Rebels have reportedly gotten the young man’s attention. Altmyer’s fellow Elite 11 alum has already thrown for 715 yards and seven touchdowns in two games this year.

Corral has completed 76.7 percent of his passes against Florida and Kentucky and is sporting a 211.9 passer rating, good enough for second and third-best nationally respectively. Those two numbers paired with an explosive offense led by Kiffin and Lebby is certainly enough to get someone’s attention, especially when the Florida State offense has sputtered out of the gates through three games.

The 6-foot-2, 185-pounder could potentially flip to the Rebels and be in line to take over for Matt Corral upon his departure from Oxford. The Starkville quarterback is certainly talented enough to do so and can make all the throws.

He can also run it a little bit, too.

Sources tell Red Cup that Ole Miss has positioned themselves nicely to flip the FSU commit. If things continue on the path they are on for Corral and Co. offensively, it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility for him to hop on the Lane Train sooner rather than later.

Can the Rebels sign another two-sport star?

On Monday night, four-star defensive tackle Tywone Malone released a top schools list. Ole Miss made the cut along with Florida State, Rutgers, Tennessee, Texas A&M, and Southern Cal. The Bergen Catholic (N.J.) star has been quite persistent that he is going to play both baseball and football in college, and if you take a look at his top-six, the Rebels have more than a puncher’s chance.

The uber-athletic big man surprised a ton of people when Ohio State didn’t make the cut, but sources think this is just a direct reflection of his desire to play college baseball. The Rebels, Aggies, Seminoles, Trojans, and Volunteers all boast much better programs when talking about the Buckeyes, but Mike Bianco has shown that he isn’t afraid to take on dual-sport stars, signing Jerrion Ealy and John Rhys Plumlee.

The Rebels have worked with Kiffin when it comes to Ealy and Plumlee getting their work in at the Manning Center before heading over to Swayze Field for practice. One would surmise that that is enticing to someone like Malone who could potentially be inciting beer showers in the spring and then re-invigorating the Landshark defense in Vaught-Hemingway Stadium in the fall.

As good as the Rebels’ offense has been through two games, the defense has been very, very bad. But, that same negative can be turned into a positive, looking mighty attractive to a top-50 player like Tywone who could almost certainly come in right away and compete for a spot in the two-deep on Deke Adams’ defensive line. Kiffin, Adams, and Malone’s primary recruiter Chris Partridge are almost certainly centralizing their sales pitch around this exact thing.

“Come in, change the defense, rebuild it back to where it was in 2014 when the Landsharks were the best defense in the nation”

Easy enough, right?

“Hey, Tywone, guess who led the nation in home runs last year? That’s right, the Rebels slapped 37 dingers in just 17 games!”

I’m sold.

Sources believe the Aggies and Seminoles are the biggest competition for Bianco and Kiffin. The 6-foot-4, 300-pounder plans on announcing his college commitment at the Under Armour All-America Game in Orlando, Fla. on January 7th, 2021.