The quarterback for the No. 1 team in the United States is from Southlake, Texas, in the heart of the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex. The quarterback ESPN tabbed this week in its 2025 mock NFL draft as the No. 1 pick is from Dallas proper. The quarterback who leads the nation in passing yards is from West Columbia, Texas, about 30 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. The quarterback who is No. 2 nationally in pass efficiency is from Katy, Texas.
The state of Texas producing great quarterbacks is as commonplace as the state producing great brisket. But even by already high historical standards, the current group of college QBs who grew up playing under Friday night lights in the Lone Star State is remarkable.
From Quinn Ewers of the Texas Longhorns (top team) to Shedeur Sanders of the Colorado Buffaloes (top draft prospect) to Cam Ward of the Miami Hurricanes (top passer) to Jalen Milroe of the Alabama Crimson Tide (No. 2 in efficiency), Texas quarterbacks are in starring roles. They’ll be prominent on your TV screens this weekend, with Ewers and Texas hosting the No. 5 Georgia Bulldogs in one of the biggest games of the season; Ward and Miami visiting the Louisville Cardinals in a dangerous trap game; Sanders and Colorado at the Arizona Wildcats; and Milroe and Alabama facing the No. 11 Tennessee Volunteers in the other big Southeastern Conference showdown of the week.
But the Texas-centric quarterbacking in college football goes past the headliners, spreading through the rest of the FBS ranks. How pervasive are they? This pervasive:
- Thirty-six percent of the remaining undefeated teams are quarterbacked by Texans: Ewers at Texas; Ward at Miami; Bryson Daily of Abernathy, Texas, with the Army Black Knights; and Kaidon Salter of Cedar Hill leads the Liberty Flames.
- Twenty-eight percent of the AP Top 25 is quarterbacked by Texas products: No. 1 Texas, No. 6 Miami, No. 7 Alabama, the No. 10 Clemson Tigers (Cade Klubnik of Austin), the No. 14 Texas A&M Aggies (Conner Weigman of Cypress), the No. 21 SMU Mustangs (Kevin Jennings of Oak Cliff) and No. 23 Army. If the No. 24 Michigan Wolverines go back to Alex Orji of Sachse, that would up it to 32%.
- Twenty-eight percent of the current starting QBs in the Power 4 conferences are from Texas, including six each in the Big 12 and SEC.
- Twenty-three percent of the top 100 nationally in passing yards per game are from Texas, including nine of the top 22. Twenty-five percent of the top 100 in pass efficiency are Texans.
Football is a way of life in the state, and has been for the better part of a century. But elite quarterbacking is becoming even more a way of life, it appears.
“The business-as-usual side is the high schools,” says Rivals.com national recruiting analyst John Garcia. “Hyperbole aside, Texas high school football is still the most structured. The place where it has ballooned even more is the offseason stuff—the private coaches, the trainers, the camps, the money spent. If your kid commits to being a quarterback in Texas, there’s almost a full-speed involvement that comes with that.”
In terms of quarterback proficiency, Texas got ahead of everyone else when the Leach generation flourished, overtaking decades of smash-mouth, option-based offenses. Hal Mumme and Mike Leach, two counter-culture football wonks, got together at NAIA school Iowa Wesleyan in 1989 and began remaking the way offensive football is played—borrowing heavily from LaVell Edwards’s philosophy at BYU but making tweaks along the way.
Mumme, from Copperas Cove, Texas, was the head coach. Leach was the offensive coordinator. They gradually took the Air Raid/spread offense revolution up the competitive ladder—from Iowa Wesleyan they went to Division II Valdosta State, then their big Division I break came at Kentucky. The marriage of the Air Raid with quarterback Tim Couch, who would become the No. 1 pick in the draft, got everyone’s attention.
From there, Leach joined Bob Stoops for a year at Oklahoma before getting his first head-coaching job at Texas Tech in 2000. He spread the Air Raid gospel to a willing congregation of high school coaches, notably hiring Art Briles from Stephenville High to help the spread proliferate at the college level.
Around the same time, 7-on-7 football became a big thing in Texas. Its early roots were largely in California, but as Texas high schools moved from option offenses to Air Raid attacks, there was more need to perfect passing. The state became a 7-on-7 hotbed.
Thus the early adopters in the Lone Star State were ahead of everyone else.
“These were the first offenses to go spread and throw it 50 times a game,” Garcia says. “The kids there are just really familiar with reading defenses and making all kinds of throws.”
From 2009-18, the Leach generation fully took off. There were Heisman Trophy winners (Robert Griffin III of Copperas Cove, Johnny Manziel of Kerrville, Baker Mayfield of Austin, Kyler Murray of Allen). There were national champion QBs (Greg McElroy of Southlake, Jalen Hurts of Houston). There were No. 1 draft picks (Andrew Luck of Houston, Mayfield, Murray). And there was a No. 10 pick in 2017, a kid out of Whitehouse, Texas, named Patrick Mahomes.
Garcia is watching the next evolution of quarterbacking in Texas now, as Mahomes’s style of play becomes the model that young people want to emulate. Tom Brady dissecting a defense from the pocket is out; Mahomes freelancing defenses into submission is in.
“Fifteen-year-olds in Texas are dropping their arm angle like Patrick Mahomes,” Garcia says. “They’re learning to throw off-platform, throwing on the run. They’ve learned all the basic mechanics, but now they’re developing a different skill set. There’s now a flair, a highlight element, to just throwing the ball.”
Ward, from Miami, could be the next great freelancer. He played in an option offense in high school in West Columbia, removed from high-profile cities and without a stat-friendly playing style. That led him to begin his college career at Incarnate Word, an FCS program in San Antonio, but it didn’t take long for his talent to become apparent.
From there, Ward transferred to Washington State, and when the Pac-12 fell apart, he became the top transfer QB on the market last offseason. Miami landed him, and the result has been a breakthrough season (so far) for the Hurricanes. Ward has led them to a 6–0 record with an array of dazzling highlight plays, many of which he’s conjured out of thin air.
“I’ve just always played that way,” Ward says. “The way I can see the field, see space on the field, I think that’s one thing that separates me from a lot of people.”
Despite leading the nation in passing yards and total offense, and ranking third in pass efficiency, Ward this week described his play to date as “mid.” In modern parlance, that’s not a compliment.
As it stands now, Ward’s “mid” play could get him to New York as a Heisman Trophy finalist. Some of his fellow Texas high school products could join him there. When it comes to quarterbacks, college football has a Lone Star State of mind in 2024—and perhaps beyond.
The next big thing: five-star Alabama commit Keelon Russell of Duncanville. He is Rivals’s No. 10 prospect nationally, and 247Sports’s No. 3 recruit. And he has some highly rated company at the position from the state as well.
As Garcia puts it, “The quarterback conversation will start and end in the state of Texas going forward.”
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Lone Star State of Mind: Elite Texas Quarterbacks Spreading Throughout College Football.
