Positional Reviews and Previews: Quarterback

This is series of positional reviews, which entail a look back and a look forward at each position for the Red Raiders. We'll try and take a look at who is gone, who remains and who we can look forward to playing in the not so distant future.

Season Review and Preview: Quarterbacks

Who Is Leaving: No one. Everyone Returns.

Who Returns: Everyone and then some. Seems like the quarterback position is fairly loaded. Harrell returns for his senior season. Taylor Potts has another season where he's learning behind the scenes, all the while, Sheffield, Loucks, and Doege will all be groomed to be the next heir to the Air Raid offense.

Harrell has one more year to prove any doubters that he's a good quarterback, but not truly great quarterback. Personally, I love watching Harrell play and am a little saddened that next year will be Harrell's last year.

Let's take a look at Harrell's and Potts' numbers last year:

I'm still very much impressed with the yards per attempt. That is not a dink and dunk offense. That's an offense averaging over 8 yards an attempt and getting down the field. This is actually a little bit higher than last year's 7.4 yards per attempt and as high, if not higher than previous Texas Tech quarterbacks. (Generally see cfbstats.com). We can probably attribute this increase to a couple of items, first and foremost, Michael Crabtree truly opened up the offense, but I think that it would be unfair not to give credit to Harrell either. Harrell increased scoring, 38 touchdowns to this year's 48 touchdowns, with little to no running game. The biggest problem that I had with Harrell were the 8 interceptions in 2 games, Missouri and Colorado. If Harrell can cut those interceptions in half, then we are talking about statistically a banner year for Harrell. Job number one and two for Harrell and Leach for Harrell's senior year: figure out why those interceptions happened and what he can do to limit those mistakes from happening again.

I do believe that the program is in very capable hands with Potts taking over once Harrell graduates. Potts has the arm-strength and the prototypical quarterback size (6-5/220) to be something that Texas Tech hasn't seen. Not to mentioned, I believe he's being groomed the right way, unfortunately for him, on the bench, to take over in 2009.

I'm not sure how much time Sheffield will actually see, only because he and Potts are on the same track. That's not say that he won't have an opportunity to play, because I truly do believe that Leach will let the best quarterback play, regardless of status, but I think it's going to be tough for Sheffield.

Loucks comes from a spread offense, as I assume every quarterback Leach recruits, in Arkansas and he's a bit on the small side (6-1/165) even for Texas Tech quarterbacks. I don't think that Leach would have recruited and signed Loucks if he didn't think that he had the goods so the size doesn't worry me.

Finally, Seth Doege and his surgically repaired knees will come to Lubbock in the spring of 2008, which means that he's going to be rehabbing at Texas Tech and will hopefully mean that he recovers quicker. I fully expect Doege to redshirt this next year. Right now there's no reason for him to even so much as sniff the field except on Thursday nights.

Who Is Going To Be Here: Keep in mind that any depth chart does include current commitments and there may be additional commitments that could change everything. In other words, we're all just guessing.

Prior Positional Reviews:

• Quarterbacks