Dae’Quan Scott made his impression on Mickey Matthews with one mad dash across the field at spring practice.
“He caught a pass over here, and it was the first-team defense, and he made all of them miss, and he ran all the way across the field and scored, and everybody, all the coaches, were laughing. It was a tremendous play. We hadn’t had anyone do that except for Rodney Landers, where you just make the whole team miss and hand the ball to the coach,” said Matthews of Scott, a R.E. Lee grad who redshirted his freshman season at James Madison and is preparing to step into an important role in the JMU offense.
“He’s a home-run theat,” said Matthews, who is mulling over putting Scott, who ran for 2,241 yards and 35 touchdowns as a quarterback running a spread offense at Lee in his senior season in 2008, back to return kicks and punts in place of All-American Scotty McGee, a sixth-round draft pick of the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaquars.
“We like what we see. He’s really practicing hard, really practicing very well. I think he’s grown up in a year. So yeah, we’re really excited,” Matthews said.
Scott has grown up in his year in college, clearly. Listed at 5-9, 190, in the media guide, Scott looks like he’s put on 15-20 pounds of muscle to his frame.
“That redshirt season was just for learning purposes – for me to get bigger, faster, stronger,” said Scott, who made the transition from quarterback to wide receiver last summer.
Scott said he is ready to step up and contribute to the Dukes.
“I see myself as a playmaker in this offense,” said Scott, who has the ringing endorsement of his head coach on that point.
“We’re going to throw some short passes to him and let him do his thing,” Matthews said.
Story by Chris Graham. Chris can be reached at [email protected].
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