The number of NFL quarterbacks from Texas draws passing interest on unique occasions.
Like when Drew Brees of the Saints and Nick Foles of the Eagles, each from Austin Westlake, made history in January by becoming the first Super Bowl MVPs from the same high school to oppose each other in an NFL playoff game.
Or when Brees and Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes from Whitehouse received all 50 votes cast for the 2018 NFL MVP award for the regular season. Mahomes won 41-9.
Or on Dec. 15 when the Arizona Cardinals will host the Cleveland Browns. Barring injuries, the opposing quarterbacks will be Texans Baker Mayfield from Lake Travis and Kyler Murray from Allen. They were the last two Heisman Trophy winners while playing collegiately for Oklahoma.
But when you see a list of NFL quarterbacks, the dominating presence of Texans rises above a passing interest.
Entering training camps this season, 18 NFL quarterbacks were from Texas. California was second with eight.
Texas also leads with 10 NFL starting quarterbacks. California is second with seven. Georgia, Louisiana and Ohio are next with two each.
In addition to Texas claiming the only two Super Bowl MVPs from the same high school and the reigning NFL MVP, Matthew Stafford from Dallas Highland Park is the fastest NFL quarterback to reach 3,000 completions (125 games) and 30,000 passing yards (109 games).
In 2012, the Colts drafted quarterback Andrew Luck from Houston Stratford as the No. 1 overall pick. He set an NFL rookie record with 4,183 yards passing.
“The best athletes in Texas used to want to play running back. Now with the development of the passing game, they want to play quarterback,” said Highland Park coach Randy Allen, who won a state championship with Stafford in 2005. “The opportunity to throw and catch starts at a young age with flag football and YMCA leagues.
“Spread offenses give young quarterbacks the opportunity to understand defensive coverages and find openreceivers. That puts Texas quarterbacks ahead of the learning curve going into college. I know out-of-state college coaches come to Texas specifically to look for quarterbacks.”
Hank Carter, head coach at Lake Travis, said Texas high school quarterbacks are college-ready because they’re trained like college quarterbacks.
“We have a great relationship with college coaches, and they’ll let us come visit them on their campuses. We get them on the chalkboard and talk about schemes and drills, so our training of quarterbacks has a lot of the same concepts as the colleges,” Carter said.
And playing sooner in college is carrying over into the NFL.
Pro quarterbacks from Texas range from the rookie Murray to the veteran Brees, who is beginning his 19th season.
The list includes two 11th-year pros that entered the league on opposite ends —Stafford as the No. 1 overall pick in the 2009 NFL Draft and Chase Daniel from Southlake Carroll as an undrafted free agent. Currently with the Bears, Daniel has played for six NFL teams and started only four games. But he is invaluable because of his understanding of passing offenses and how they can attack opposing defenses.
David Barron, a Houston-based sportswriter who has written for Texas Football magazine for 40 years, said the success of Texas high school quarterbacks had a trickle-up effect that eventually made inroads with the NFL.
“More Texas colleges went to the spread because that was the type of player they were getting. It’s the same with the NFL. There aren’t that many prototypical drop-back passers coming out of college anymore,” Barron said.
“In the NFL, they can manipulate the rules to favor a philosophy, and fans love seeing offensive carnage.”
Todd Dodge, the current Austin Westlake coach who also tutored Daniel at Southlake Carroll, said the spread offense penetrated the NFL because of its diversity.
“Coaches are doing a lot more things out of the spread than they could in a running offense,” Dodge said. “You can throw out of it, obviously, but you can also run out of it. The scheme to spread out the defense facilitates the running game, too, and that’s what the NFL likes about it.”
The list of Texas high schools that produced current NFL quarterbacks range from Class 6A Allen, the largest school in the state with an enrollment of 6,600, to Class 3A Jim Ned, with an enrollment of 340.
Sixteen different high schools produced the current 18 NFL quarterbacks from Texas. Austin Westlake and Lake Travis produced two each. Lake Travis also has produced eight NCAA Division I quarterbacks in the last 12 years. Plus, its current quarterback, Hudson Card, already has committed to the University of Texas —and its JV quarterback, Nate Yarnell, already has an offer from the University of Houston.
Westlake and Lake Travis are Austin suburban schools located just 12 miles apart.
The 18 NFL quarterbacks, 10 starters and the impact of their accomplishments has elevated the dominance of Texas quarterbacks from a passing interest to a bigger question: How did Texas become the hub for producing NFL quarterbacks?
There’s not one answer.
How Texas became QB Central
Population is a popular answer. Texas has the second-highest population of any state at 29 million and no less than 1,400 football-playing high schools, improving its chances of producing more NFL players.
But population alone doesn’t explain Texas having more NFL quarterbacks than California, the most-populated state at 39.7 million.
The emphasis placed on football in Texas high schools is another popular answer, and deserves a lot of credit. Texas high schools —with help from local booster clubs and fans who want winning programs —pour financial resources into football, including facilities, equipment and money to pay for the best coaches. The payback is the feeling of unity a winning football team brings a community.
Because of the public emphasis, Texas high school football coaches must win to keep their jobs or move on to a larger school. Thus, they generally work long hours and are always looking for an advantage.
“ … Not to say anything bad about coaches anywhere else, but when you're a coach in Texas, you're a coach. You might teach some in the school, but you don't go work at Home Depot or at the bank. You're a coach,” Redskins quarterback Case Keenum told ESPN in 2018. Keenum led Abilene Wylie to a state championship, became the NCAA career leader for passing yards and touchdowns at Houston and currently is starting his eighth season in the NFL.
With its emphasis on football, Texas always has been a leader in producing high school players ready to excel at the next levels. When football teams were built around running backs through the 1990s, Texas produced Doak Walker, Earl Campbell, Eric Dickerson, LaDainian Tomlinson, Thurman Thomas and Billy Sims —to name a few.
As passing became emphasized, Texas high schools began producing more quarterbacks. But how did high school football in Texas, after being played conservatively for decades, transform from 40 passes a season to 40 passes a game?
Multiple coaches are mentioned in this transformation —including Sonny Detmer in San Antonio, Rusty Dowling at Mission and Todd Dodge, the current Westlake coach who developed Chase Daniel at Southlake Carroll.
But the coach mentioned most is Art Briles. Frustrated that his faster Hamlin team couldn’t beat Panhandle in a 1984 smash-mouth playoff game that ended in a 7-7 tie, Briles began tinkering with spreading the field and passing more to get the ball to his playmakers in space.
It took a few years for Briles to perfect his idea, but by the 1990s, his Stephenville Yellow Jackets won four state championships in seven years by spreading the field and finding holes in opposing defenses. Deception was also involved. During Stephenville’s first championship run in 1993, a Highland Park scout noted at halftime of a playoff game that the Jackets had not lined up in the same formation twice for the entire first half.
“Texas high school coaches are creatures of habit,” Barron said. “Rarely do they do something until it’s proven it can work. You could win games with the spread, but it took a while for coaches like Briles and others to prove you could win championships in the spread.”
Briles’initial intention was to make his teams successful. Another outcome of the passing offenses was it got more players involved with touching the football. Instead of a star running back carrying 35 times a game, the spread involved four receivers plus a running back. Receivers had more fun catching the ball and scoring touchdowns than blocking downfield.
“You take a kid that’s primarily a basketball or baseball player, but wants to get involved with football, too. He can play receiver and not have to be as physical. Nothing against these kids, but they can contribute and not take a beating if they’re playing in passing offenses,” said San Angelo Central coach Brent Davis, who won an unprecedented five consecutive district championships with elevated quarterback play. His last three QBs —Brennen Wooten, Cal Vincent and Maverick McIvor —signed to play college football.
As player participation grew, it coincided with generational coaching turnover. Older, run-oriented coaches with military backgrounds from the 1940s and ’50 began to retire. They were replaced by younger offensive coordinators and head coaches wanting to spread the field and throw.
The growing popularity of 7-on-7 football, a summertime pass-tag competition between high school teams that began in 1998, evolved into state championship competition. Playing without linemen, 7-on-7 gives quarterbacks, receivers and running backs the opportunity to sharpen pass-and-catch skills and timing prior to the fall high school season. It also gave quarterbacks even more practice at reading defenses.
Cultural changes intersected with players feeling more involvement with passing offenses. High school players became less interested in the brute, physical nature of smash-mouth football. They preferred the idea of playing more of a wide-open, higher-scoring game. New generations of fans also came to prefer more scoring over a 10-7 game.
Smash-mouth football is still played by some schools like Euless Trinity. Allen and Katy utilize more traditional offenses that balance running and passing. Class 4A Liberty Hill has won state with the run-oriented Slot-T offense, but those schools are now in the minority. Even Mason, a Class 2A smash-mouth team that bases from the Wing-T, flashed a five-receiver shotgun package in its state championship game last year.
The Mike Leach factor
The impact of Mike Leach’s Air Raid offense at Texas Tech from 2000-2009 can’t be overemphasized. Leach needed passers and catchers to run his offense, and there was a trickle-down effect to Texas high schools to emulate his philosophy. At the collegiate level, Leach’s Air Raid offense took the spread from a fad and made it mainstream —primarily because he never had a losing season at Tech.
Graham Harrell, who quarterbacked Ennis to a state title, chose Texas Tech over Georgia for the chance to play in Leach’s offense. Harrell eventually broke five NCAA career passing records from 2005-2008 and led Tech to a school-record 11 wins in 2008.
“Georgia was a bigger program, but they were going to run the I-formation and throw play-action passes. Graham said he wanted to go to Tech and throw it 50 times a game because that would be more fun,” said Sam Harrell, Graham’s dad and the Ennis head coach.
Leach had six starting quarterbacks in 10 seasons at Tech and all succeeded in the Air Raid offense. Kliff Kingsbury, B.J. Symons, walk-on Sonny Cumbie, walk-on Cody Hodges, Graham Harrell and Taylor Potts combined to pass for more than 48,000 yards and 377 TDs for the Red Raiders.
Leach’s growing coaching tree includes Lincoln Riley of Oklahoma; Kingsbury, first-year NFL coach of the Cardinals; and Graham Harrell, offensive coordinator at USC. Kingsbury, who played high school football at New Braunfels, drafted fellow Texan Kyler Murray this year to be his quarterback. Completing the circle, Murray was coached in college by Riley at OU.
While Class 6A and 5A schools were supplying Leach and other Air Raid colleges with most of their players, smaller Texas high schools began to use forms of the shotgun spread. Small schools often use whatever offense fits their talent since they don’t have enough players to run the same offense every year.
The most successful exception is Class 3A Canadian. The Wildcats installed the spread in 2007, and over the next nine seasons, won four state championships. They’ve won 153 of 173 games overall since installing the spread.
“We identify kids early on in the sixth grade and start developing them into quarterbacks,” said current Canadian coach Chris Koetting. “The most important thing with our quarterbacks is accuracy. Then it’s reading defenses and going through their progressions to find the open receiver. If they’re looking in the right place, they won’t throw interceptions.”
A recent trend in the development of young quarterbacks in Texas is the private, year-round coach separate from the high school staff. This is especially true for prospects near metropolitan areas and with parents who can afford private coaching.
“I don’t know of any quarterback you’ve heard of up here in the (Dallas-Fort Worth) Metroplex that don’t have a private coach now,” Sam Harrell said. “I was against it at first, but I’ve learned to embrace it. I used to be adamant about my quarterbacks using my footwork and my arm motion. But you can’t make everybody throw like Tom Brady. If he can throw well, I don’t mess with him.
“When I played (1970s), we did quarterback drills, but not every day. Now, if they’re working every day with a private coach, they’re getting better at their craft. We (high school coaches) focus more on our specific routes and timing.”
The popularity of passing offenses with players, combined with the sophisticated development of young quarterbacks, has made being able to throw almost mandatory for winning.
“With defenses jumping into different fronts, it’s hard to be successful in the larger schools if you can’t throw the ball,” Central’s Davis said. “You can’t win meaningful games at our level without great quarterback play.”
Current NFL quarterbacks from Texas
• J.T. Barrett, New Orleans (Wichita Falls Rider)
• Drew Brees, New Orleans (Austin Westlake)
• Derek Carr, Oakland(Fort Bend Clements)
• Andy Dalton, Cincinnati(Katy)
• Chase Daniel, Chicago(Southlake Carroll)
• Nick Foles, Jacksonville (Austin Westlake)
• Garrett Gilbert, Cleveland (Lake Travis)
• Robert Griffin III, Baltimore (Copperas Cove)
• Case Keenum, Washington (Abilene Wylie)
• Andrew Luck, Indianapolis (Houston Stratford)
• Patrick Mahomes, Kansas City (Whitehouse)
• Baker Mayfield, Cleveland (Lake Travis)
• Colt McCoy, Washington (Jim Ned)
• Kyler Murray, Arizona (Allen)
• Matthew Stafford, Detroit (Highland Park)
• Jarrett Stidham, New England (Stephenville)
• Ryan Tannehill, Tennessee (Big Spring)
• Davis Webb, New York Jets (Prosper)
Note: Josh McCown from Jacksonville, Texas, retired in June after playing for eight NFL teams in 15 seasons.
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