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Texas Tech quarterback Graham Harrell led the nation in passing yards, touchdowns and completion percentage last season. Oklahoma’s Sam Bradford owned the nation’s top quarterback efficiency rating.
Neither was the All-Big 12 quarterback.
The bar was raised that high in 2007. With Harrell, Bradford, Missouri’s Chase Daniel (the all-conference selection), Kansas’ Todd Reesing and Texas’ Colt McCoy returning this fall, the standard becomes that much greater.
“The overall strength of quarterbacks makes the whole league even stronger this year,” Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops said.
That’s quite a statement after a 2007 in which four teams finished in the top 10 and the league went 5-3 in bowl games.
With spring practice concluded throughout the conference, nothing happened in the camps to change the impression that the Big 12 will again be ahead of the curve nationally when it comes to offensive production.
Oh, there were some low-scoring spring games. No touchdown was scored at Kansas State. Kansas’ offensive starters looked sluggish at times.
But they were more products of vanilla approaches. Besides, in some cases, the defense needed a shot of confidence from a limited play-calling, low-scoring scrimmage.
“We set ourselves up to the point where guys are starting to gain confidence,” said first-year Nebraska coach Bo Pelini, the former LSU defensive coordinator.
Defenses figure to be on the run again in the fall. The top six passers in the Big 12 and 10 starting quarterbacks overall are returning. The Big 12 produced seven of the 19 most productive offenses in total yards and eight of the nation’s top 28 scoring offenses.
Most of the teams are now running some version of the spread offense popularized in the Big 12 by Texas Tech’s Mike Leach, and coaches say they’re recruiting more top-level athletes who prefer to play offense.
“In high school there are more skilled athletes contributing to offense than ever before,” Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy said.
Kansas State and Oklahoma joined the growing list of no-huddle offenses this spring. Nothing wrong with the Sooners’ offense last season. Bradford huddled up and led Oklahoma to a league championship while averaging 42.3 points per game.
But Oklahoma also saw the no-huddle success of Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma State and at least wanted to show opponents a new look. The attack also should help teams adjust to the new 40-second play-clock rule.
“The game is speeded up to some degree,” Stoops said. “When you’re in a regular huddle, it makes it pretty hard to change plays.”
So the Sooners will play faster, like seemingly every team in the Big 12. Missouri has made a living playing that way, leading the conference last season in plays per game.
It was partly because of Daniel that K-State coach Ron Prince said he knew the North Division schools no longer would lag behind their South counterparts.
“This time last year we were talking about how the North wasn’t up to snuff with the other division, but we looked around and saw the quarterback play and had a pretty good sense it was going to be a strong year all-round,” Prince said.
Among North schools, Daniel and Reesing each threw for 33 touchdowns and led their teams to a school-record 12 victories and bowl triumphs.
“We all know that quarterback is generally the difference in taking a team to another level, and Chase does that for us,” Missouri coach Gary Pinkel said.
And others, as a group, are doing that for the Big 12.
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