Bowman stays healthy and plays as he did in 2018
It isn’t fair to put an entire football season on one player. There are simply too many variables in a game that has 11 teammates on the field together at one time to say that everything rests on just one individual. What’s more, there’s another side of the ball that can undo any individual’s heroics. (Just ask 2016 Pat Mahomes.)
But the reality is that the success of the 2020 campaign will hinge on whether or not redshirt sophomore QB Alan Bowman will be able to stay on the field this year. And if he does find a way to stay healthy, can he play more like the 2018 version of himself than what we saw in the three appearances he made a year ago?
The best-case scenario for this entire football team is that year-three of the Bowman era proves to be the first in which he’s healthy. But also, he has to give Tech good enough play at the QB spot to win close games. That was lacking last year as Jett Duffey was not good enough to lead Tech to wins, only good enough to keep his team in most games.
We need to see the 2018 version of Bowman. That year, in games he started and didn’t leave due to injury, he was spectacular. Averaging 403 yards per game through the air, he tossed 13 TDs to just six picks and had an average QB rating of 155.8. But in 2019, his yards per game fell to 340 and his rating dropped to 130.2.
We spend quite a bit of time talking about whether or not Bowman will stay healthy but that’s only part of the equation in 2020. He also has to play better against Power 5 opponents than he has thus far.
In four full games against teams from a major conference (he played only half of the games against West Virginia and Oklahoma in 2018), he’s got a TD:INT ratio of 7:8 and two games with completion percentages below 60. That can’t be the case this year as nine of his ten games will be against Big 12 opponents and if this best-case scenario is to play out, he’s not only going to have to be available for all nine but he’s going to have to play at a higher level than he ever has.