As impressive as Graham Harrell’s first season as the starter for Mike Leach and the Texas Tech Red Raiders was, the young quarterback’s second season starting for Leach and Texas Tech was even more impressive.
There’s no doubt that expectations for Harrell were pretty high. He was the first returning starter at quarterback that Leach and the Red Raiders had since Kliff Kingsbury was running the Air Raid offense in Lubbock to start the century off. On top of that, in 2006, Harrell provided Texas Tech with its seventh ever season of a quarterback throwing for more than 3000 yards in a season.
He had already proven to be an impressive passer and playing with high expectations can be a difficult thing to do. But for Harrell and the Red Raiders, the offense just kept thriving and that pairing provided Texas Tech fans with a ton of fun in 2007.
That’s because Harrell became the second ever Texas Tech quarterback to have back-to-back seasons of throwing for more than 3000 yards.
Texas Tech football history: Graham Harrell’s second season as the starter shattered impressive expectations in 2007
As a whole on the season, Harrell managed to throw for 400 or more yards in each of Texas Tech’s first four games (419 yards against the SMU Mustangs, 484 yards against UTEP, 414 yards vs. Rice, and an astonishing 646 yards against Oklahoma State).
He then managed to throw for 425 yards against Iowa State and Texas A&M. Both. Each. He put up 425 yards in back-to-back weeks against the Cyclones and then the Aggies. Against Colorado, Harrell threw for 431 yards. He then followed that up with 433 yards against Baylor, 466 yards against Texas, 420 yards against Oklahoma, and capped the season off with 407 yards against Virginia.
As a whole, Harrell completed 512 of his 713 pass attempts for 5705 yards and 48 touchdowns against just 14 picks. It would be a massive understatement to say that that’s a really solid season.