Let me paint a picture for you. Six-foot senior quarterback Jack Schryber of Georgetown Prep is flushed out of the pocket on a crucial third and 10, running for his life. He glances downfield, and no one is open. He can’t run for it with the defenders bearing down on him. What’s he going to do?

As long as Schryber has Paul Phillips on the roster, his choice should be fairly simple: just find Phillips’ 6-foot-5, 215-pound frame, and chuck it in his direction.

That’s because it’s rare for a high school quarterback to have a security blanket of a tight end with his size and speed lining up at the end of the line. College coaches are interested, to say the least.

“The best way to describe Paul is, when you look at Division 1 athletes, he has the gene,” Georgetown Prep head coach Dan Paro said. “The gene to play 1A football in looking at his attributes on the field is he’s got size, he’s got strength, he’s got speed, he’s a good athlete, but he’s also got the motivation, character and all of that.”

Phillips even has some good bloodlines to boot. His brothers Colter and Andrew are competing for starting spots on Virginia and Stanford, respectively. They are both bigger than Paul: Colter is one inch and 25 pounds larger, and Andrew is 84 pounds heavier. This means that Phillips probably still has room to grow.

That’s a scary thought for Division 1 defensive ends, unless they like getting chip blocks from tight ends who might weigh the same as the lineman they’re supposed to be getting past. Phillips might know a little bit of that feeling, as he will be experimenting on the defensive side of the ball this year, as well as his normal tight end duties.

Not that he needs to find more ways to contribute to the team – while it is certainly anecdotal evidence, Phillips’ hands are as good as advertised.

“I think we threw the ball at him 20 times last year, and I don’t think he dropped one ball,” Paro said. “He made some spectacular catches, but every time we threw him the ball, he caught it. He can also block.”

All these things combine to make Phillips a three-star recruit on Rivals.com, and they list interest from Boston College, Clemson, North Carolina, Northwestern, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Virginia, Wake Forest and Rice. He’s gotten offered from Richmond, but Phillips is not worried about getting offers from a Division 1 program. The main reason none have offered yet is a June foot injury that held him out of a few camps, meaning a healthy Phillips hasn’t been able to ply his skills to college coaches directly yet.

Paro says that Phillips is most likely to go somewhere that he can get both a football experience, along with a solid academic program. This intellectual approach also manifests itself on the field too, as Phillips has learned the entire Prep offense, from every position.

“He’s not just worried about his position, he’s trying to grasp the entire offensive concept,” Paro said. “And that’s really important, because if you grasp what we’re trying to do, you can better execute what your responsibilities are. He’s spent the time to learn the game. Now I can put him in all types of situations and he understands it and knows what needs to get done.”