The 2016 season has not gone to plan for Ole Miss, and the hits just keep on coming.

The school announced Sunday evening that star quarterback Chad Kelly will miss the rest of the season with a serious knee injury after tearing his ACL and lateral meniscus in Ole Miss' 37-27 win over Georgia Southern on Saturday. Kelly suffered the injury during the third quarter and was replaced by Jason Pellerin.

What will be interesting to see for the Rebels going forward is how they plan to replace Kelly. Coach Hugh Freeze can either stick with Pellerin or he could replace Kelly with another freshman, Shea Patterson.

Patterson was the crown jewel of Ole Miss' 2016 recruiting class. The five-star quarterback out of IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, was the top-ranked pro-style quarterback in the country per the 247Sports Composite, and the fourth-ranked overall recruit in the 2016 class. He had been redshirting this season, and now Freeze needs to decide whether he's better off putting Patterson in now to prepare for 2017 or to just let Pellerin try and lead the team to a bowl game and save a year of eligibility for Patterson.

It won't be an easy choice to make at this point.

As for Kelly, there's no other way to spin this than to say it's a huge blow. His senior season was not going to plan, and now his draft stock will certainly be affected by the injury.

Torn ACLs typically take a year to fully heal, and Kelly had been projected as a second-round draft pick in a draft class without a "sure thing" quarterback. He could have possibly crept into the first round with a strong combine performance, but now it's hard to imagine an NFL team wanting to invest an early round pick in a quarterback that may not even be able to practice before the 2017 NFL season begins.