Is Chase Daniel Really "Mr. Indispensable"?

Tim Tebow may be Mr. Heisman, but if you ask ESPN's Bruce Feldman, Chase Daniel is Mr. Indispensable. Feldman ranked Chase as the most indispensable player to his team in all of college football.

"Chase Daniel, Missouri, QB: The Tigers are a legit national title contender and the 6-foot senior is the biggest reason why. There are other QBs with stronger arms and who can run faster. Dozens more are taller. None are better though at dissecting a defense in college and few are as accurate.

"Better still, Daniel's cocksure presence permeates this program now. His back-up senior Chase Patton more than looks the part, but the 6-foot-5, 220-pounder, a guy who Daniel overtook for the job years ago, has only completed six passes in his career."

Feldman was also heard predicting a Mizzou National Championship yesterday on College Football Live. Feldman's no stranger to the Mizzou bandwagon. He was one of the first major college football writers to consider us legitimate title threats last season and was the first person I saw projecting us to go to a BCS Bowl.

The only point I would make about Chase being named No. 1 on this list is that I'm not so sure we couldn't win the Big 12 North and upwards of 10 games with Chase Patton as our starting quarterback.

I know Patton has rarely seen the field so I'm basing this almost entirely on what I've read about him in Dave Matter and Graham Watson's practice reports over the past few years.

But they've both been real high on the guy since last year and they don't usually miss that badly on players (see Danario Alexander, Carl Gettis, Sean Weatherspoon, etc.). 

There's a reason Patton was recruited so heavily in high school. Unfortunately for him it just took a while to adapt to the college game. He couldn't afford to have that happen if he wanted to ever be the starter with Daniel's impending arrival after Patton's redshirt year.

But he's proven to be a mentally tough player by not quitting the team despite being guaranteed never to star as long as Daniel stays healthy. He appears to have the tools (height and a great arm), intangibles and more than likely knows the offense like the back of his hand at this point. 

As catastrophic as an injury to Chase Daniel would be, I don't think it would be the end of our season by any means.