We’re just three weeks into this marathon 2015 college football season, but one definite trend has emerged - or, perhaps more accurately, continued: if you want to move the ball in a big way, get a quarterback from a Texas high school.
Former Texas high school gun slingers occupy five of the top six total offense spots thus far, and the other - Bowling Green’s Matt Johnson - runs an offense under the tutelage of Dino Babers, who copied his playbook from Texas high school legend Art Briles during his time as a Baylor assistant.
Here’s the list:
- Matt Johnson (Bowling Green/Harrisburg, Pa.): 1,416 total yards, 472 yards per game
- Baker Mayfield (Oklahoma/Austin, Texas): 1,201 total yards, 400.3 yards per game
- Seth Russell (Baylor/Garland, Texas): 782 total yards/391 yards per game
- Patrick Mahomes (Texas Tech/Whitehouse, Texas): 1,158 total yards/386 yards per game
- Dane Evans (Tulsa/Sanger, Texas): 1,153 total yards/384.3 yards per game
- Trevone Boykin (TCU/Mesquite, Texas): 1,133 total yards/377.7 yards per game
Furthermore, Lone Star State signal callers Greg Ward, Jr. (Houston/Tyler, Texas) and Skyler Howard (West Virginia/Fort Worth, Texas) rank ninth and 11th, respectively, Matt Davis (SMU/Houston) stands at 17th, and Jerrod Heard (Texas/Denton, Texas) racked up a school-record 527 yards of total offense in Saturday night’s loss to California.
This is not a new trend. After all, we all remember the 2008 season when Colt McCoy, Graham Harrell, Robert Griffin III, Chase Daniel and Todd Reesing lit up the midwestern skies. But it does confirm that when coaches go quarterback shopping, they should start in Texas and look outward from there.