On one sideline Saturday in Lubbock, Texas, you’ll find blue-chip quarterbacks stacked two deep, with one waiting for the other to provide him an opportunity for playing time.
Across the field, the other team will be starting a former walk-on.
Which guy would you rather have throwing the ball on third-and-6 with the game on the line?
To most, the answer is Texas Tech’s Sonny Cumbie, the former walk-on who has evolved into the nation’s leading passer (420.2 yards per game, 63.6 completion percentage).
And that’s what is wrong with the quarterback matchup that will unfold when No. 8 Texas (5-1, 2-1 Big 12) meets Tech (4-2, 2-1) in what amounts to an elimination game in the South Division.
The problem is not that Cumbie, a fifth-year senior in a pass-first offense, has become a better thrower at the college level than Texas counterparts Vince Young or Chance Mock. That should happen, given the nature of the schools’ respective offenses. The problem is the wide gap between the production levels that coaches and fans expect to see when the ball goes into the air.
In his last outing, Cumbie completed 44 of 56 passes for 436 yards in a 70-10 rout of Nebraska. Texas quarterbacks have completed only 32 passes this month in 68 tries.
That is a byproduct of developing talent, a skill that Tech coach Mike Leach flashes in abundance. It’s a skill often brought into question in discussions about Texas coach Mack Brown and offensive coordinator Greg Davis, who have had their share of hits and misses during seven seasons in Austin.
At this juncture, Brown and Davis need their quarterbacks to begin hitting more receivers in critical situations if they want to avoid a 7-4 record and all the negative fallout that would accompany it.
Even in a run-based offense such as Texas’, passing statistics such as the ones Longhorns quarterbacks have put up the last two weeks are troublesome: 8 of 23 for 86 yards against Oklahoma (all by Young) and 7 of 19 for 58 yards, with two interceptions, against Missouri (combined effort).
Though recruiters measure a player’s height, weight and speed, Cumbie said: “I don’t think it measures the intangibles that make a good player. That’s not just the quarterback position but every position.”
Asked about his own development, Cumbie said: “Things worked out well here for me. That’s just the way it turns out, I guess.”
Or maybe that’s because Leach is capable of polishing his quarterbacks, regardless of their pedigrees. For his counterparts at Texas, the acid test is Young, a sophomore with a career mark of 11-2 as a starter who is embarking on a pivotal stretch in his development.
Davis said Young, who has completed only 11 of 32 passes the last two weeks, simply has hit a plateau on a developmental curve in which quarterbacks inevitably take a step back before taking two more steps forward.
“You hope to push through that as quickly as you can,” said Davis, who likened the process to learning to drive.
Davis says Young is still balancing when he can blend safely into traffic and when he needs to wait for another truck to pass.
“It happens to all quarterbacks,” Davis said. “Then they come through that time and they’re fine. Through four weeks of the season, [Young] was completing more than 60 percent of his passes. I think he’ll get back to that. I think he’ll be fine.”
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Davis’ employment status, by the end of the season, could rest with him being right about that.