Why Texas Tech football is in better shape now than one year ago

For the first time in two years, we have no questions about the QB position

There was a time when Texas Tech football fans took for granted that any QB that led the Red Raider offense would be among the most productive passers in the nation.  After all, we had seen a parade of 4,000-yard passers come through Lubbock for the better part of two decades.

But the last two years have been marked by instability at the game’s most important position.  Though in 2017, most believed that Nic Shimonek was more than capable of leading the offense after Pat Mahomes left for the NFL, we had not seen him perform in the role of starter.

Unfortunately, he was underwhelming, albeit somewhat productive, as he was eventually benched in the second-to-last game of the season.  While Shimonek’s story of giving up a scholarship at Iowa to be a walk-on at Tech and waiting three years to get a shot at starting is inspiring, his play was not as he is widely considered the worst full-time starting QB of the “Air Raid” era.

Then last summer, the options at QB seemed even worse, though they were more plentiful.  Kingsbury had to sort through a three-way QB race between junior McLane Carter, sophomore Jett Duffey, and true freshman Alan Bowman, a group that had combined to throw fewer than 75 career passes in college.  Throughout the spring and for the vast majority of fall camp, the starting QB was a mystery as no one stepped up to take the job by the throat.

Ultimatley, Kingsbury settled on Carter because he was the most experienced and the least likely to make crushing mistakes.  But because of his incredibly weak arm and his lack of any elite physical skill, he was a player with an incredibly low ceiling and he only got the job because he was the safest choice, which appealed to his naturally cautious head coach.

It is never advantageous for a team built around the spread offense to go into a season with a starting QB that earned the job not because he is the best passer on the team or the roster’s best athlete but because he is the least likely screw up.  That will not be the case in 2019.

With Bowman now entrenched as the starter, Tech knows that it will have what most in Lubbock belive is the best passer in the Big 12 running the show.  Often, a new head coach has to sort through a mess at the QB spot as is the case with Chris Klieman at Kansas State and Neal Brown at West Virginia.  But Matt Wells has a star in the making at QB which gives him a tremendous head start when it comes to rebiulding this program.