Texas Tech Quarterback Job Up For Grabs?

A year ago Graham Harrell (pictured at right) won the starting quarterback job for Texas Tech as a sophomore. All he did was complete over 60% of his passes and throw for 38 touchdowns. One would assume that he had the job for 2007 all locked up. On Friday, his head coach, Mike Leach let the world know that this wasn't necessarily the case.

"Taylor Potts has outperformed Graham Harrell the last two practices, so the quarterback situation's wide open,'' Leach said. "If Taylor Potts is able to continue to outperform Graham the rest of the spring and through camp and some things like that, he's got a shot to be the starting quarterback here.''

Potts apparently did nothing to discourage the quarterback controversy with his performance in the Red Raiders' scrimmage on Saturday. He completed 20-24 passes for 255 yards and four touchdowns. Those numbers surpassed the efforts of Harrell who was 19 of 30 for 165 yards and three touchdowns. Leach now claims that the remainder of the spring's snaps will be split evenly between the two QBs and he apparently feels good about this situation.

"Competition brings out the best in everybody," Leach said, "but you want to make sure it's real and warranted competition, the best you can. I think both are good quarterbacks. Both do good things. Both have some real strengths, and now I think we want to prepare them both so that they can have the best offseason possible, and then see who we're going to go with in the fall."

The emergence of Potts is an unexpected development in Lubbock. Prior to his recent performance, he was probably most known for taking part in ESPNU's televised summer camp-on steroids Summer House. For his sake I'm glad that it looks as though he will soon be able to add something a little more meaningful to his resume'.