During the Kliff Kingsbury era, the Texas Tech football team has had tremendously bad luck with injuries at the quarterback position making an already difficult job even more daunting.
As the Texas Tech football team prepares to play its third game of the season without its starting quarterback, it is hard to ignore the awful luck Kliff Kingsbury has had with injuries at the most important position on the field. While many are frustrated with the continued struggles of the program under Kingsbury’s watch, it must be noted that no head coach in the “Air Raid” era has had worse fortune with the health of his quarterbacks.
Kingsbury’s bad luck began before he even coached his first game. In the summer of 2013, QB Michael Brewer, the frontrunner to be the starter, injured his back while wake boarding causing him to miss almost the entire season.
That left Kingsbury with two true freshmen, Davis Webb and Baker Mayfield. What’s more, just weeks before the season began, an illness caused the already rail-thin Webb to lose even more weight and miss significant practice time forcing the walk-on Mayfield to open the season as the starter.
But Mayfield would leave the third game of the season against TCU with an ankle injury causing Webb to finish the game. Mayfield would start the next two games but a reoccurrence of the ankle injury forced Webb to start game-six against Iowa State.
Webb would make the next four starts until leaving the Kansas State game early. Mayfield would start the final two games of the regular season, losses to Baylor and Texas, before leaving the program prior to the bowl game against Arizona State.
In 2014, Webb would start the first eight games of the season but would not finish the Oklahoma State nor the TCU game. The injury suffered against the Horned Frogs would end his season and open the door for freshman Pat Mahomes.
But Mahomes would be knocked out of his first career start with a first-quarter concussion. That pressed third-string QB Vincent Testaverde into action against a rugged UT defense that pummeled the crippled Red Raider offense in a 34-13 loss.
Mahomes would not miss a start in his career and his streak of 29-consecutive starts helped provide some stability at the QB position. But he did fail to finish the 2016 game against Kansas with a shoulder injury sustained at the end of a long run.
Last year, Nic Shimonek was healthy all season making 11-straight starts to begin the season. But he was benched for the final game of the year because of ineffectiveness.
That brings us to the current season which has seen the Red Raiders start three different quarterbacks for the fist time in the “Air Raid” era. So to say that Kingsbury’s luck has been less than ideal is an understatement.
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Compare Kingsbury’s QB issues to the good fortune of Mike Leach and Tommy Tuberville. Leach began his career as a head coach with 119 consecutive starts without having to start a backup quarterback. He went from 2000 to the sixth game in the 2009 season before having his starting quarterback miss a game due to injury when Taylor Potts was sidelined with a concussion sustained against New Mexico.
Backup Steven Sheffield would make only two starts before breaking his foot at the end of a road win at Nebraska putting Potts back at the helm. But to say that Leach had remarkable luck with the health of his QB’s is a massive understatement.
As for Tuberville, he would have his starting quarterback available for all 38 games of his time in Lubbock. Taylor Potts made every start in 2010 and Seth Doege made 25-consecutive starts from 2011 to 2012.
In the 164 games of the “Air Raid” era prior to Kingsbury’s arrival, Texas Tech had its starting quarterback available 162 times. When Jett Duffey starts Saturday against Texas, it will mean that Kingsbury has had his starting quarterback miss more starts in 2018 than his two predecessors did in the 13 previous seasons.
Fortunately, Kingsbury is a bonafide quarterback guru having coached the likes of Mahomes, Webb, Mayfield, Johnny Manziel and Case Keenum. His ability to coach quarterbacks has helped him manage the unusual rash of injuries at the position throughout his time in Lubbock and never before has that skill been more called upon than in 2018 when most believe he has been coaching for his job.