Before Shea Patterson moved south and became the top-ranked high school quarterback prospect in the nation, his ambitions were more modest.

The mega-talent who turned the recruiting world on its ear just wanted to make the DeVeaux Vikings of the West Toledo Lightweight Football League — and perhaps throw his weight around a little.

As a fourth-grader playing up with sixth-graders after not-so-narrowly surpassing the 95-pound weight limit in his neighborhood league, Patterson was not yet a star passer but a fullback and linebacker.

“I had no aspirations of playing quarterback,” he said. “I always wanted to hit the quarterback.”

Eight years later, Patterson smiles at the memory.

He has come a long way.

And that’s not just his migrant path from Toledo to high schools in Texas, Louisiana, and Florida, and now college in Mississippi.

Now 6 feet, 2 inches and 198 pounds with an outsized right arm and unnatural instincts, Patterson is the kind of headliner who can carry the biggest hopes of a big-dreaming program. His five-star billing does little justice to the excitement that followed his arrival at Mississippi, where he enrolled a semester early last week and will reunite with his older brother, Sean, a former standout quarterback at St. John’s Jesuit and a newly hired Rebels aide.

Patterson is rated by Rivals.com and Scout.com as the No. 1 quarterback in the Class of 2016. He led Calvary Baptist Academy in his adopted hometown of Shreveport, La. to consecutive state titles, then played his final high school season last year at the Florida football factory, IMG Academy. Earlier this month, he was named most valuable player of the U.S. Army All-American Bowl in San Antonio.

“This whole process has just been so much fun,” said Patterson, who on Facebook lists his occupation as NFL quarterback. “I’m blessed with the family and support group I’ve had around me. Ever since I was a freshman in high school, the recruiting just kind of blew up.”

Those who watched Patterson grow up in Toledo could not have foreseen the heights of his rise, but they knew Shea Man — as coaches and friends called him — was different.

Patterson looks back warmly. Back then, before he moved to Texas in fifth grade and soon became courted by every blue-blood program in the country, he played football only for the fun of it all. Baseball and basketball too.

At Sean’s games at St. John’s, he was the kid hurling passes under the bleachers on Friday nights or sneaking off to shoot in the side gym during basketball games.

“They’d come back from halftime and be missing the game ball,” said his father, Sean, a Bowsher graduate.

Shea was known mostly as Sean, Jr.’s little brother. Sean, a 2007 St. John’s graduate, set several Titans career passing records before starring at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.

But in the city’s youth sports circles, Shea also forged an early name for himself.

His first star turn came on the grass fields of the YMCA by the Toledo Zoo. He was the quarterback of his flag football team in a 10-and-under league. He was 6.

Andy Grombacher, who coached another team in the league, remembers the first time he watched Shea confound a defense. It was his own. The pudgy but quick kindergartner could not be stopped.

Grombacher had two questions: Really, how old is this kid? ... How do I get him on my team? For the scoop, he turned to Bobby Brown, who coached with Sean, Sr.

“I’m thinking, ‘I’ve got to get that kid to be on my team as things start progressing around here, because that kid is going to be a star,’ ” said Grombacher, a former Central Catholic star whose son, Andrew, became one of Shea’s best friends and is now a senior at Central.

“People don’t change inside. If you’ve got poise and confidence and moxie, you’ve always had it. It’s just how much does it come out. You just don’t see 6-year-old kids drop back, look left, not see anything, then look back to the right. In kindergarten, it’s snap the ball, the kid peeks his head up, and he just runs.”

Grombacher bet Brown $20 that Shea was no 6-year-old, then tracked down a phone number for Sean.

“Andy called me out of the blue,” Sean recalled, “and said, ‘I’ve just got to know one thing: Tell me I just didn’t have a 6-year-old score seven touchdowns on me.’ ”

Shea began playing tackle football as a third-grader for the Wernert Wildcats elementary school team. His size and speed made him a natural fit at fullback and middle linebacker, and that’s just how he liked it.

“A lot of times, we couldn’t have him practice because he just hit so hard,” said Grombacher, who coached the Wildcats. “I’m thinking that he’s going to make somebody not want to play anymore.”

The next year, Shea overshot the league’s 95-pound limit, despite a late sweat-it-out effort to shed 20 pounds or so. (His attire for neighborhood runs just before weigh-in day included Hefty garbage bags.) But the move up to play for DeVeaux — which featured future Central star and Notre Dame quarterback DeShone Kizer as a tight end — proved no problem.

“My assistant coach and I, we just looked at each other and said, ‘Oh, yeah, we’ve got something now,’ ” said Tom Syroka, the Vikings’ coach.

Only once he left town, of course, would Shea’s potential become fully evident.

Shea said it was hard moving away from his friends here but called it “kind of exciting to me to go somewhere new.” And try a new position. In Texas, where Sean, Sr., got a new job selling flooring, he switched to quarterback in a middle-school Pop Warner league and — like at the South Toledo YMCA — proved a natural.

Shea was a coveted recruit by his freshman season at Hidalgo in the Rio Grande Valley, then passed for more than 5,000 yards, 72 touchdowns, and seven interceptions in two years in Shreveport. 

Though he once dreamed of playing for Michigan, where Sean, Sr., had season tickets, the move south broadened his prospects. Shea felt most comfortable at Ole Miss, where his brother will be along for the ride. Sean, 27, was hired soon after Shea’s commitment last February as the Rebels’ associate director of recruiting operations.

In Oxford, Shea will headline the most celebrated class in Ole Miss history. Shea is rated by Rivals as the No. 3 overall recruit in the nation while the Rebels’ 20-member-and-counting 2016 class is third nationally, behind only Ohio State and Louisiana State. 

Back in Toledo, meanwhile, Shea’s celebrity has raised a compelling alternative history: What if the best quarterback in the country had played his high school ball here and the Pattersons became the first family of Ohio football? (Shea’s younger brother, Nick, a 6-foot, 180-pound tight end in eighth grade, is already being recruited.) What if Shea had followed his brother to St. John’s or his childhood best friend to Central? 

“Every time St. John’s people see something about Shea, they’re always like, ‘Wow, how good would he have been at St. John’s?’ And I tell them he wouldn’t have been very good,” Grombacher said with a laugh. “He would have been in red and gray.”

In any case, Shea has not forgotten the place he still considers home, where he learned to love football before football so loved him. He said, “I have so many good memories of growing up in Toledo.” 

“You’re far apart, but you stay in contact with old friends,” Sean Sr. said. “I know Shea does. Everything has been so positive, from my old coaches to Shea’s old coaches to friends. It’s great to have that support from Toledo. People there still just see him as little Shea Man.”

Contact David Briggs at: dbriggs@theblade.com, 419-724-6084 or on Twitter @DBriggsBlade.

First Published January 24, 2016, 5:15 a.m.