Four-star quarterback Tanner McKee recently committed to the Stanford Cardinal, and now he has committed to a two-year mission trip to Brazil. He made an announcement about this on his Twitter page Saturday.
For the next two years I will be serving the people of Brazil and speaking Portuguese! I was called to the Curitiba South mission and report to the Brazil Missionary Training Center on July 10th! I couldn’t be more excited! pic.twitter.com/HmInz0SuXb
— Tanner McKee (@McKeeTmckee) March 10, 2018
This means he won’t be a part of Stanford’s 2018 recruiting class, but rather will be joining the program as part of its 2020 class — a development that was known heading into the recruiting process.
McKee ended up choosing Stanford over other high-profile programs like Alabama and Texas. Likely, some of that had to do with Cardinal head coach David Shaw’s understanding that, for this young man who is a committed Mormon, the mission comes first.
In fact, Shaw signed another top quarterback, Jack West, in February with the understanding that McKee wouldn’t be available to him for two more years.
“It’s not often in a class that you take two quarterbacks that are actually in different classes,” Stanford coach David Shaw told the San Jose Mercury News last month. “Two great guys that we feel excited about that at some point are going to be the guys pulling the trigger for Stanford football.”
McKee, a pro-style passer, will deal with some high expectations when he does return to the states to play for Stanford. The four-star quarterback was rated No. 46 overall in 2018 by the 247Sports Composite rankings.