The notable college football national preview magazines have circulated this offseason, and there are some takes on the Texas football program and the Big 12 as a whole worth talking about. In the Athlon Sports national preview magazine for this coming season, the Big 12 quarterback rooms were ranked out top-to-bottom.
And while the placement of the Longhorns’ quarterback room didn’t seem to be wildly inaccurate, there is one issue worth noting here. This issue worth noting here has to do with the Longhorns getting ranked behind the West Virginia Mountaineers.
Texas ranked fourth among the Big 12 quarterback rooms for the 2022 season, falling in line behind the West Virginia Mountaineers, Oklahoma Sooners, and then the Oklahoma State Cowboys.
You can view how Athlon Sports ranked out the 10 Big 12 quarterback rooms for the 2022 season, thanks to 247Sports here.
There is an argument to be made here that Texas and Oklahoma have the two best quarterback rooms in the Big 12 by a good margin. But the fact of the matter is that Texas’ QB room should at least be ranked higher than West Virginia’s.
Depending on how Athlon came up with the criteria to rank the QB rooms, it’s hard to find many angles that would take West Virginia over Texas. If talent and depth are overarching factors here, then Texas is getting done pretty dirty in this QB room ranking. But the way that these quarterback rooms were ranked out makes it look like experience and name recognition have more to do with the pecking order than talent and depth.
It looks like Athlon likes what the former Georgia Bulldogs and USC Trojans transfer JT Daniels brings to the table for the Mountaineers.
Daniels has shown flashes in his career but doesn’t have even a full season of sustained success as a starting quarterback under his belt, hence why he has entered the transfer portal twice now.
West Virginia also doesn’t have a whole lot of depth behind Daniels. Projected backup quarterback Garrett Greene has more rushing stats under his belt for his career than passing stats, showing some uncertainty in that QB room for the Mountaineers.
Quinn Ewers and the Texas football QB room ranked too low by Athlon Sports
Meanwhile, Texas has a former No. 1 and perfect-rated recruit in the nation as the likely starter in the redshirt freshman transfer Quinn Ewers. Along with Ewers, there are other promising former blue-chip recruits such as freshman Maalik Murphy and junior Hudson Card.
Texas has three quarterbacks that could legitimately start for at least three or four other Big 12 teams this year.
Moreover, having Ewers in this quarterback room should at least be enough, in combination with the depth present in this group otherwise, to get Texas in the top three.
There’s also a case to be made here that the Oklahoma and Texas quarterback rooms are the two best in the Big 12 top-to-bottom. Oklahoma has one of the best projected starters in the Big 12 this year in the former UCF Knights standout Dillon Gabriel. And behind Gabriel is a talented former blue-chip recruit and ex-Florida Gators commit in freshman Nick Evers.
It’s likely that Oklahoma and Texas both have way more quarterback talent and depth in 2022 than either West Virginia or even Oklahoma State. While head coach Mike Gundy and the Pokes do have an experienced returning starter at quarterback in senior Spencer Sanders, he really hasn’t done much of late to separate himself as the top player at the position in the Big 12.
In fact, Sanders ranked eighth in the Big 12 last season in passer efficiency rating while tying for the lead in interceptions with a dozen.
All in all, it’s not a very difficult argument to present that this Athlon Sports quarterback room ranking for the Big 12 at least seems a little bit out of whack. Depending on what the main factors that were considered for this list, it feels like there are a lot of inconsistencies.
This list from Athlon is the type of ranking that should be a motivating factor for Ewers and the Longhorns’ quarterback room to take their game to another level this fall. Given the insane arm talent that Ewers brings to the table, the ceiling will be astronomically high for him in the next couple of seasons.
Add us as a preferred source on Google