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Rarely are high school juniors passionate and devoted enough to a craft that they know exactly what they want to do with their future. For Wisconsin quarterback commit Mabrey Mettauer, the answer was always clear.
That’s why Mettauer, in the middle of his junior year last February, left The Woodlands High School in Texas for three weeks and moved to Florida so he could train every day with a private quarterbacks coach.
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Mettauer said his dad, Mark, couldn’t attend because he is a heart surgeon who was on call. But his mom, Marissa, went with him after talking to counselors and other school administrators to ensure the plan was feasible. All agreed that Mabrey could go, as long as he took his tests when everyone else did upon his return.
The idea for the training was to gain in-person knowledge that would mesh Mettauer’s natural gifts with a new level of development. And that’s exactly what Mettauer believes he acquired after working with Will Hewlett, who has trained San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy and Indianapolis Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson.
“It was a cool experience,” Mettauer said. “Within those three weeks, I grew so much as a quarterback. It felt like I was in the NFL.”
That’s where Mettauer, like so many high-level prep players, hopes to go someday. But first comes the next phase of his football career: playing quarterback at Wisconsin.
The 6-foot-6, 228-pound Mettauer is a four-star prospect who will sign with the Badgers’ 2024 recruiting class on Wednesday during the first day of the early signing period. He could represent the future for Wisconsin at quarterback, given how well his skill set appears to match what Badgers offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Phil Longo wants from players at the position: a big body, a big arm, mobility to keep defenses honest and the intelligence and hard-working mentality necessary to operate the offense.
“He’s physical. He’s not afraid,” The Woodlands football coach Jim Rapp said. “So if he needed to pull it down and run or if we needed to get four tough yards, we knew he was going to be able to do that. He is driven to get better. I think that has as much to do with his success as anything.”
Mettauer gained an early understanding of the sacrifices required to rise above his peers. His older brother, McKade, is a 6-4, 316-pound offensive lineman who started as a true freshman at Cal in 2019 and spent the past two seasons at Oklahoma as a starting guard. Over the past year, Mettauer has worked with three quarterback coaches on different aspects of his game.
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Early in Mettauer’s high school career, he trained with Ron Veal, who is from the Atlanta area and tutored NFL quarterbacks Trevor Lawrence and Justin Fields since they were in middle school. Mettauer would travel to Atlanta to hone his drops, movements and ball handling within the confines of his team’s offense. Veal said the biggest adjustment they worked on was putting Mettauer’s spine and torso in a better upright position to deliver throws because he tended to lean left.
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During Mettauer’s senior season, the two connected twice a week over Zoom, where Mettauer would share his screen so they could go over the game film of The Woodlands’ upcoming opponent — how a defense played against an empty backfield or aligned with three receivers to one side, for example.
“He has a great understanding of coverage concepts and how they’re trying to pressure you, where they’re trying to pressure you from, from the study we did and from the tendencies that the teams they played would give us,” Veal said. “Going into college, you do the same thing. You apply what you learn and just add information to it.”
In addition to Veal and Hewlett, Mettauer also needed someone nearby to work with more frequently. For that, he chose Sean Salisbury, the former NFL quarterback. Mettauer has already finished his high school classes as he awaits early enrollment at Wisconsin. On a recent weekday, he woke up at 7:30 a.m. to train and then drove to another facility for a weight-lifting session, finishing by noon.
It’s no wonder why Rapp said Mettauer compiled the best season of his high school career as a senior. During a 55-26 victory against Oak Ridge in September, he threw for 429 yards and ran for 103 yards while accounting for seven touchdowns. Mettauer finished his senior season completing 162 of 233 passes (69.5 percent) for 2,333 yards with 29 touchdowns and one interception, which came in the final game. He also ran the ball 77 times for 416 yards with five touchdowns.
TOUCHDOWN
The Woodlands ties it up as QB @MabreyMettauer keeps the zone read and gets in for the score! #TXHSFBPlayoffs
8:05 left in 4th Quarter @twhfootball 20@KCTigerFootball 20
— VYPE Houston (@vypehouston) November 18, 2023
For his career, he completed 67 percent of his passes for 7,550 yards with 88 touchdowns and 12 interceptions and ran for 1,717 yards and 31 touchdowns. Mettauer said he considers himself a dual-threat quarterback who can capitalize on his size and athleticism in the run game. And while Mettauer was known throughout his high school career as a deep-ball threat, he said he tweaked his mechanics to alter the speed of different passes and become more effective on short and intermediate throws.
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“After the first few games, all that training, I was like, ‘Oh, it’s really paid off,’” Mettauer said. “It’s great to feel that all the hard work you put in the offseason helped you during the season.”
Mettauer was 6 feet 2 as an eighth-grader and played as a blocking tight end and offensive tackle for his youth football teams until he moved to quarterback as a high school freshman. He lined up as a wildcat quarterback as a freshman because of his ability to run over defenders. But he also tossed a 53-yard touchdown on his first varsity throw in a game against Grand Oaks.
His first scholarship offer came after that season from Georgia Tech, followed by Louisiana Monroe and Kansas State. Mettauer excelled during the summer at an LSU camp and earned a scholarship offer from the Tigers. Before the end of his sophomore season, schools such as Florida, Miami, Cal, Arizona State and Baylor had offered.
But the relationship that Mettauer developed with Longo resonated. Longo extended a scholarship offer to Mettauer while at North Carolina in January 2022. Mettauer was intrigued that Longo helped quarterback Sam Howell set 27 school records and then watched as Drake Maye finished 10th in Heisman Trophy voting last season.
When Longo moved on to Wisconsin at the end of the year, the Badgers rocketed to the top of Mettauer’s list because of his belief that Longo could maximize his talent in an Air Raid system. Mettauer had earned a Wisconsin offer under the previous coaching staff and visited campus for a home loss against Washington State but wasn’t enamored with the offense.
“I dream of being in the Air Raid,” Mettauer said. “I love throwing the ball. I love airing it out. And just getting the opportunity to play college ball has always been a dream. I have family members that have been doing it, and so it’s just something to be excited for and I’m very excited to be coached under someone who’s brought so many people to the NFL.”
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Mettauer committed to Wisconsin on Dec. 24, 2022, over North Carolina and Kansas State. As he wrote down a list of pros and cons for his top three schools, he found the Badgers to be the clear-cut winner, noting the program’s offensive line tradition, its history of winning and playing for a coach he wanted to learn from. The only con for Wisconsin was that it was cold in the winter, which is why the family took a trip to Madison in January so he could experience campus in that setting. Mark said his son enjoyed winter weather, having taken family ski trips and fished on frozen lakes in Colorado.
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Mettauer became the first Class of 2024 prospect to commit under the new coaching staff and took an active approach to recruiting new teammates. He invited a pair of fellow commits in his class — offensive tackle Kevin Heywood and inside linebacker Landon Gauthier — to his house in Texas over the summer to get to know them better. Mettauer said Gauthier will be his roommate next season.
A year between verbally committing and officially signing is an eternity in recruiting, but Mettauer never wavered on his Badgers pledge, even as other programs tried to sway him. Miami re-offered Mettauer because offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Shannon Dawson, who recruited Mettauer while holding the same role at Houston, left for the Hurricanes in February. Mettauer also earned a new scholarship offer from Florida State, though he never posted it on social media because he was committed to Wisconsin.
Mark said Mabrey has spent countless hours studying Wisconsin’s playbook so he can be prepared when spring practices begin. Wisconsin is set to have five scholarship quarterbacks, with Mettauer joining Miami fifth-year senior transfer Tyler Van Dyke, redshirt sophomores Braedyn Locke and Nick Evers and redshirt freshman Cole LaCrue. Longo visited Mettauer two weeks ago and, during the trip, quizzed him on the system.
“He missed a couple of what I thought were easy ones and Longo thought were easy ones,” Mark said. “But then Longo really hammered him on some really hard concepts, which he got. He’s a very visual learner like myself. He uses an iPad and paper. He’s been doing that pretty heavy in the summer with Longo. And then once the season started, it was probably about once a week because he’s been in the same offense in high school for four years.”
So invested is Mettauer that he arrived in Madison on Monday to spend a few days around the team during bowl prep. He will then travel with his family to Tampa, Fla., to watch Wisconsin play LSU in the ReliaQuest Bowl on Jan. 1 before enrolling in school and beginning offseason workouts — ready, as always, to get to work.
“His talent is only going to grow as he gets smarter, older and he understands the college game from the mental standpoint,” Veal said. “The physical side is there. He’s got the type of talent that the sky’s the limit for him.”
(Photo: Lawrence Iles / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
