Texas Tech football: Players with huge opportunities in spring practice

Donovan Smith could earn the backup QB job

You could call Donovan Smith a local product because he played his senior year of high school at Frienship after moving to the area from Las Vegas when his father joined Matt Wells’ staff.  But whether or not he is truly a West Texas product is irrelevant at this time.  What matters is that he has an opportunity to seize the No. 2 QB job this spring.

Let’s not kid ourselves.  Though the coaches say that there is an open competition for the QB1 spot, we all know that the coaching staff wants Oregon transfer Tyler Shough to win the job.  And I suspect that he wouldn’t have come to Lubbock had he not been given some level of assurance that he would be the man.

Of course, things could change if one of the other QBs on campus outperforms him but those other competitors would have to out-play him by a wide margin this spring and in fall camp to supplant him as the favorite to start.  But even if he doesn’t win the starting job, Smith has an opportunity to win the backup job and that’s not insignificant.

We’ve seen in each of the last three years that Tech has had to turn to multiple players to make more than one start at the QB spot.  Thus, there’s no guarantee that Shough (or whoever wins the job) will start every game.

Thus, finding a backup QB will be critical as I don’t believe that the coaches believe that Henry Colombi has what it takes physically to lead this offense for multiple games should the starter go down.  I also don’t believe that the competition for the starting job is as wide-open as we are led to believe because Wells isn’t going to trust either of the freshmen QBs (Smith or Behren Morton) on his roster to save his job this fall.

But one will likely be this year’s backup and given that he’s in his second year in the program, Smith may have the upper hand.  Thus, it will be interesting to see what he does this spring.