Texas Tech football: Injury-plagued players will be key to 2020 success

QB Maverick McIvor

If you consider that in each of the last two seasons, the Texas Tech football program has had to start three different quarterbacks, it’s easy to understand why redshirt freshman QB Maverick McIvor is so important in 2020.  And just like Alan Bowman, the San Angelo native is coming off of two injury-plagued seasons.

In fact, over the last two years, McIvor has played essentially one and a half games of football.  In the second game of his senior season of high school, he blew out his knee thus ending his high school career and he never even got to see the field in 2019 for the Red Raiders thanks to a broken foot he sustained in the second intrasquad scrimmage of the fall.

Thus, we don’t know what we have in the dual-threat QB who was the No. 101 player in Texas in the class of 2019 according to 247Sports.  But we do know that he needs to be ready to play this fall because he is the only other scholarship QB on campus after Bowman.

Jett Duffey’s decision to leave the program means that Tech will have just three scholarship players at the most important position on the field in 2020.  What’s more, the third will be true freshman Donovan Smith, who was a starting QB for the first time in his life in 2019 at Frienship H.S. in Wolfforth.

Over the last two seasons, the QB that started the Red Raiders’ first game has made just five of a possible 24 starts.  Indeed, this is a program that has had to endure unprecedented misfortune at the position and that means Maverick McIvor needs to be ready to play meaningful snaps at some point this year because misfortune seems to be defining the QB room in Lubbock.