Texas Tech football: How 10 men contributed to decline of Red Raider football

Jarrett Stidham

The final person we will look at is a man who was never officially a member of the Texas Tech football program but who helped compound the program’s QB woes over the past two seasons. Former Baylor and Auburn QB Jarrett Stidham was never on the Red Raider football roster but yet he too was caught up in the wake of Pat Mahomes’ ascension to stardom.

Way back in March of 2014, Stidham committed to Texas Tech and Kliff Kingsbury. Rated a 4-star prospect by 247Sports and a 5-star prospect by some other scouting sites, the Stephenville native was the highest-ranked QB to ever commit to the Red Raiders.

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But after being the bell-cow of the 2015 Tech recruiting class for nearly nine months, Stidham abruptly decomitted on December 13, 2014, only to commit to Baylor just days later. This was a crushing blow to Kingsbury and the ramifications would be felt for years to come.

Because there is only one QB on the field at a time, teams do not usually recruit multiple prospects at that position in a class. So because he believed Stidham was going to be his QB of the future, Kingsbury stopped recruiting other QB’s in the class of 2015.

But Stidham was in attendance that November when a true freshman named Pat Mahomes threw for 598 yards and six touchdowns against No. 7 Baylor in a near upset. And seeing Mahomes become a star right before his own eyes made Stidham reevaluate his decision to come to Lubbock where he would not have had the starting job handed to him as he would have liked.

What hurt the Red Raiders most was the timing of this decision. Because his decomittment came just days before the late December dead period, Kingsbury had no time to find another QB. The result was that Tech did not sign a QB in the 2015 class meaning that when Mahomes left Lubbock after the 2016 season, Tech was suddenly without an heir apparent at the game’s most important position.

But had Stidham stuck around, he would have started in 2017 and 2018. Instead, we got a year of Nic Shimonek in 2017 and a year of the QB carousel last fall. It is amazing to think that a player who never suited up for the Red Raiders nor ever started a game against them could have such an impact on the program but Jarrett Stidham did. And all because he did not want to compete with Pat Mahomes.