Texas QBs again land on big stage
Texas high school quarterbacks guru Todd Dodge got what he wanted when Kansas City's Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hurts of Philadelphia won their conference championship games.
“I really like Joe Burrow,” Dodge said with a chuckle in reference to Cincinnati's star quarterback, “but I'm not going to root for Joe Burrow over Patrick Mahomes, that Texas quarterback.”
The Mahomes-Hurts matchup is the first showdown between a pair of Texas high school QBs and the latest milestone for a football-crazy state once known much more for Earl Campbell and Eric Dickerson than whoever was handing off to those future Pro Football Hall of Fame running backs.
Dodge, a recently retired high school coach who won seven state championships, played a big role in
the start of the transformation around 1980. He was the quarterback for what he considered the father of the passing game in Texas.
Ronnie Thompson, a high school coach in Port Arthur about 100 miles from Houston, was throwing before it was cool in the Lone Star State, which made Dodge a high-profile recruit for the Texas Longhorns.
While Dodge's career in Austin was disappointing, his legacy of training quarterbacks in his home state is unmistakable. One of the keys was identifying QBs — plenty of them — as early as seventh grade, with the goal of always having two capable of flourishing on the varsity.
Before the likes of Dodge, Art Briles and the late
Sonny Detmer came along, the focus was usually on finding the best running back and building from there.
“Jalen Hurts 40 years ago would have been the next great tailback in the Southwest Conference,” said Dodge, who still runs a quarterback training program in retirement. “Somewhere along the way, his dad put the ball in his hands and he started throwing it.”
Indeed, coach Averion Hurts at Channelview just outside Houston put his son at QB. Jalen Hurts went from college star at Alabama and Oklahoma to Philadelphia backup behind Carson Wentz to NFL MVP candidate in a matter of six years.
Mahomes had the throwing pedigree as the son of former major league pitcher Pat Mahomes, and his strong arm was evident long before he became the starter at Whitehouse in East Texas.
The Chiefs traded up to get Mahomes 10th overall in 2017.