The Tanner Lee Pre-Season Hype May Have Gone Too Far

I happened to glance at Twitter Saturday afternoon, and a Tweet from the Omaha World-Herald caught my eye.

Poll: Will Tanner Lee make an All-Big Ten team in his first season as the #Huskers’ quarterback?

VOTE: https://t.co/DU4N32pCZD pic.twitter.com/n56N8Yoqct

— World-Herald Big Red (@OWHbigred) June 10, 2017

I clicked on the link, and my jaw hit the floor.  The results?

33% said Tanner Lee would be a first team All-Big Ten honoree
35% said he would be second team
19% said he would be third team
13% said he wouldn't be an all-Big Ten honoree

Internet polls are infamous for their unreliability, but frankly, the very premise of the question seems unrealistic to me. Why is that? I simply go back to Lee's statistics from Tulane:  53% completion percentage, 23 touchdowns, 21 interceptions. Yet, 87% of respondents think he's going from being an AAC washout to one of the best quarterbacks in the Big Ten.

For comparison sake, Tommy Armstrong completed 52% of his passes his first two seasons with 31 touchdowns and 20 interceptions.  Armstrong's passer efficiency was in the 120's; Lee's never topped 110.

Let's take it a step further: all spring long, the coaches kept saying how close the battle was between Lee and Patrick O'Brien, a redshirt freshman who's never played one down of college football.  So if we are to believe that Lee is an all-conference candidate going into this season, then Patrick O'Brien would also be a candidate for all-Big Ten honors, if he were to play.

As a redshirt freshman.

And then there are the other quarterbacks in the league:  Penn State's Trace McSorley, Michigan's Wilton Speight and Ohio State's J.T. Barrett are all more accomplished quarterbacks than Lee.  Heck, I'd even argue that Indiana's Richard Lagow, Northwestern's David Thorson and even Purdue's David Blough (with upgraded coaching) have all proven more than Lee thus far.

Nothing would be more fun than to have Tanner Lee live up to these lofty expectations; if Lee plays at that level, then Nebraska is a serious contender, if not the favorite, to win the Big Ten west. So for goodness sake, I'd love it if the hype pans out.

But I'm having too much difficulty to reconcile what Lee has actually accomplished and what people are expecting. Are the fans and media setting Tanner Lee up to fail with unreasonable expectations?  What if Tanner Lee is simply a quarterback with good fundamentals who simply throws like Tommy Armstrong without the mobility.

How fast will fans turn on him if he doesn't deliver a west championship and all-conference honors?