True to his word: Dezryian Ellis’ impact has resulted in rise of Franklin Parish, commitment to LSU
by William Weathers // GeauxPreps.com Contributor
In what had become an alarming development, promising football players either bypassed Franklin Parish High School or departed the program after a couple of years.
Four years ago, with the Patriots in position to welcome one of the area’s top middle players in Dezryian Ellis, Burnette set up a meeting with the then eighth-grade phenom to get a pulse on his future.
“In years past, in this area, kids have transferred to different schools, gone to different places,” said Burnette, the school’s offensive coordinator before taking over as head coach. “He was such a hot commodity coming out of junior high; he was a guy that, early on, we were afraid we were going to lose.
“He was coming in as a freshman at the same time I got the job,” Burnette said. “We’ve gone through his journey together. I remember him talking to me and telling me there was nothing to worry about. He was coming to Franklin Parish to win a state championship.”
True to his word, Ellis has been instrumental in the rise of Franklin Parish’s program. The Patriots won the school’s first District 2-4A championship, finished 10-2, and advanced to the Division II non-select state quarterfinals – the best showing in the history of the school, which was consolidated in 2005.
The 6-foot-2, 185-pound Ellis was the first team Class 4A All-State quarterback and District 2-4A Offensive MVP, compiling nearly 2,500 yards and 29 touchdowns. The four-star prospect has already found his college home, selecting LSU, where he’ll play cornerback, but it’s the team’s success that’s been a driving factor throughout the summer.
“We had the best year the school’s ever had,” Ellis said of 2024. “We wish we could have ended it better than what we did.”
Ellis’ commitment to LSU is to play a position he’s never played in high school. He picked up valuable experience at cornerback during 7-on-7 play in the summer and with the team’s stakes rising to state championship level, Burnette said it’s not out of the realm of possibility to see Ellis this season in the secondary in pivotal moments.
“We’re in a spot where it’s all or nothing,” he said. “I have a lot of big-time athletes at my disposal. When this thing gets toward the end, and it’s time to really come out and play, you’ll see him.”
Ellis was a gifted youngster capable of playing an array of sports growing up in Winnsboro.
“Since I was a little kid, I always wanted to make it to the league,” Ellis said of the NFL. “No matter what, I wanted to make the MLB at one point, to the NBA, and around the sixth or seventh, I wanted to make it to the NFL, and I’ve stuck with that.”
Baseball was his first love, transitioning that passion to basketball, where Ellis has played at Franklin Parish. The Patriots (18-9) reached the state quarterfinals last season against Minden.
Ellis traded in his bat and glove for track spikes at Franklin Parish and placed sixth in this spring’s Class 4A state outdoor meet in the high jump, where he has a best clearance of 6-6 to his credit.
With senior quarterback Bryce Curtis, who passed for 2,208 yards and 22 touchdowns, the team’s starter in 2022, Burnette found a spot for Ellis to play at wide receiver.
There was limited time as a back-up quarterback with 125 yards and 3 TDs on 3 of 12 passing, but Ellis helped the team’s offense with 15 receptions for 264 yards and 3 TDs. He also had seven carries for 39 yards.
“Dez was too good an athlete for us to have on the sideline,” Burnette said. “He was the backup quarterback for a few weeks, but we had to figure out a way to get this kid on the field. With him at wide receiver, that showed us how good an athlete he was.”
Ellis, who hadn’t played quarterback until the eighth grade, was the heir apparent to Curtis and led Franklin Parish to a second straight 7-4 season with a trip to the state regionals.
He was a natural fit in the Patriots’ no-huddle, spread attack, a playmaker capable of showing off an accurate arm and putting pressure on defenses with his running ability.
“For defenses, it’s kind of hard to go against receivers that can catch and a quarterback that can throw the ball, but what makes it 10 times worse is having a quarterback that can run,” Ellis said. “It makes the defense have to play a lot of man (coverage). I loved the offense.”
Ellis cracked the 2,000-yard passing plateau with 2,395 yards on 122 of 268 attempts with 26 TDs and seven interceptions as a sophomore. He added 169 yards on the ground and 3 scores.
“One thing people don’t know when it comes to him is they look at his athleticism, they look at his arm,” said Burnette, a wide receiver at Tulane. “They also see his personality, and all of those things are perfectly fine. What they don’t know is his knowledge of the offense and his football IQ. I may call a play that he changes.
“Where a play has multiple reads, multiple checks, converts a route, or is an RPO (run-pass option), all of our offenses have been based around the quarterback,” Burnette said. “He’s allowed to change routes according to coverage. People may think I’m calling it, but there’s a lot of times where I was dead wrong and he made it right. He’s a guy that understands the offense, coverages, and himself. He stays within who he is. He’s a fantastic player.”
Before the start of Franklin Parish’s memorable season in ‘24, Ellis received his first recruiting letter from UL-Lafayette.
“It made me lock in more,” he said. “To be more tuned into the sport that I loved playing. I felt at one point I was falling off, thinking nobody was going to call.”
That was just the start of a rewarding season that brought Ellis both team and personal gratification.
Franklin Parish won its first four games, including a Week 3 victory with a residual effect – a 32-28 triumph over reigning Division III select state champion Calvary Baptist.
Ellis was a menace to the Cavaliers’ defense, helping his team out of a deep hole in the second quarter at his own 1-yard line, turning a first-down play into a 99-yard score that flipped the game’s momentum. He wound up with 173 yards on 13 attempts and two TDs.
“We got into a dogfight, and we’re backed up on our own 1-yard line and he pulls it, takes a zone read 99 yards,” Burnette said. “Every time we had a big game, a big moment, the game that put us on the map was Calvary Baptist.”
The team’s lone regular-season blemish – a 51-47 setback against Class 5A Ouachita (which was the most points the Lions allowed all season) – turned out to be one of Ellis’ best performances.
He accounted for 452 yards and six TDs, passing for 279 yards and 5 scores.
Franklin Parish’s bid for a district title picked up plenty of steam in a league-opening 29-27 win over West Ouachita. Ellis went over 300 yards in total offense with a 254-yard passing effort and 2 TDs.
The following week proved memorable for Ellis, who picked up his first scholarship offer from Tulane.
“I thought that maybe the place I was going to go,” he said. “I didn’t figure I would get anything bigger than Tulane.”
The Patriots closed out the regular season with three straight wins to secure the school’s first district title, capped by a 64-48 win over Tioga, where Ellis passed for 239 yards and accounted for six touchdowns – four of which were thrown in the air.
That set the stage for home regional with Brusly, where freshman running back DJ Neal rushed for 109 yards and 2 TDs, and sophomore safety Trey Neal had a team-high 12 tackles, enabling Franklin Parish to host a quarterfinal against Iowa.
The Patriots jumped out to a 22-7 halftime lead on the strength of a pair of touchdowns from Martin, extended their lead to 28-13 until the visiting Yellow Jackets rallied with 29 unanswered points in the second half for a 42-28 win.
“We don’t want to go through that pain again; we don’t want to feel that loss again,” Ellis said. “It’s pushed us as a team to go and break that door down this year.”
Louisiana Tech was the next school to extend a scholarship offer to Ellis, who was in store for a busy spring ahead.
College coaches were more active with Ellis, either acquiring down game film or setting up Junior Day visits, which allow prospects the opportunity to get a better idea of what programs have to offer both academically and athletically.
Ellis said he took three to four such visits, which led to six unofficial trips to Tulane, LSU, La. Tech, Florida State, Southern Mississippi, and SMU.
“It was a lot,” Ellis said of his spring activity. “I figured out how to manage it, and when you get to college, it’s going to be the same thing. There’s going to be a lot of stuff moving around, and you’ve got to have time management.”
Ellis always tried to put his teammates above his own recruiting interests.
After landing near double-digit scholarship offers, Ellis’ approach to taking unofficial visits was to showcase teammates such as defensive linemen Chris Addison and Tavon Bell.
“The biggest thing for me during the spring was getting the guys under me that had no looks,” Ellis said. “Some of the older guys didn’t have looks, and I wanted to get them seen.”
Mississippi State was such a place that was interested in hosting Ellis, but he heeded the advice of Burnette and took an unofficial visit to LSU in June.
Ellis, who had attended a game at LSU in ’23 with Addison, received a scholarship offer on the visit by defensive coordinator Blake Baker. He later committed to the Tigers on June 28th after discussions with recruiting coordinator/running backs coach Frank Wilson, head coach Brian Kelly, and cornerbacks coach Corey Raymond.
Bell gave his pledge to Texas State three days later, and Addison selected Michigan State less than a week later.
“I was going to go to Mississippi State more for Chris and Tavon because I had a bunch of offers,” Ellis said. “When coach said I needed to go to LSU, I felt it was in the air that it could be a possibility that I could get an offer. After the offer, I was going down (unofficial visits) there a lot. I felt you couldn’t beat it. How do you say no to LSU?
Ellis had narrowed his finalists with official visits to Houston, Tulane, West Virginia, and LSU.
The quality of the Tigers’ class – which is ranked nationally as high as No. 8 by On3/Rivals and 247Sports – certainly appealed to a player with Ellis’s ability who expressed a desire to play with other great players.
“With the class they had, when I was going down there, we were getting cool,” said Ellis, who would be the first player from Franklin Parish to sign with LSU since Anthony “Booger” McFarland in 1995. “I wanted to go somewhere where I could win. I knew the guys that were committed. I knew what they were capable of.”
LSU explained that with such a desirable body frame, Ellis fit the mold the Tigers had at cornerback, where his length and ball skills were considerable attributes.
“They liked my size and change of direction,” he said. “You look at the league (NFL) and it’s been taken over by tall, lanky corners such as (New York Jets’ 6-foot-3) Sauce Gardner.”
Burnette remains a staunch supporter of his quarterback.
“He’s a quarterback that’s a heck of an athlete that can do anything on the football field,” he said. “He hasn’t gone to all of these personal trainers and workouts across the country. Yeah, maybe he’s a little raw in his mechanics. Yeah, his footwork can be better, but I promise you if it’s a Friday night, and I had to pick from him and some other guys, it’s going to be him 10 out of 10 times.”
Ellis, 19-6 as a starting quarterback, has generated 5,744 total yards and 73 TDs at Franklin Parish, but it’s the conversation four years ago with his coach, where he visualized the future, that still resonates the most.
“To say something like that at a young age, about a place that hadn’t experienced a whole lot of success, much less district and state championships, was a testimony of the type of kid he is,” Burnette said. “And just the leadership that he’s brought to the team. Last year, he just took off, and I’m expecting even bigger things from him this year.”
Featured Image Courtesy Tae Shot It/Tae Trent