Forget about Brendan Sorsby. Will Hammond got the last laugh after all | Opinion
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Let’s get the obvious out of the way. Will Hammond is playing Week 1 for Texas Tech.
The surgically repaired knee is good to go, and he’s leading the offense in fall camp with no limitations.
Now, about that other thing with the other quarterback who sucked life from the sports world for what seemed like an entire offseason.
“Let me ask you something,” Hammond, Texas Tech’s redshirt sophomore quarterback tells USA TODAY Sports. “If your boss hired someone to take your place, would you just sit around and let it happen? Now you know how I felt.”
This is your quarterback, Texas Tech. About as stand tall, don’t flinch, West Texas as it gets ― even if he is from Austin.
Hammond never understood the drama with Brendan Sorsby in the first place. Forget about Sorsby’s gambling addiction, the NCAA, Texas Tech’s public fight to keep him eligible, or any legalities swirling in Lubbock.
You’ve got to be out of your mind if you think Hammond was just going to hand the starting job to the heralded transfer quarterback, and meekly accept a supporting role.
“I wasn’t listening to anybody or anything,” Hammond said. “I’m a big believer in myself, and always have been. It wasn’t going to change because they brought somebody else in.”
So here we are, and the black hats of college football ― the best team a couple billionaires can buy and legally fight to the death to keep it all together ― have a chance to control the narrative again. Only this time with the best story in college football.
From the most hated team, to the quarterback you can't ignore. For all the right reasons.
Texas Tech did everything it could to sign Sorsby from the transfer portal, to support him when his gambling addiction was unmasked, to legally fight all comers until it was obvious Sorsby had no path to return to college football.
Meanwhile, the guy everyone forgot about — the player at the butt end of this Shakespearean tragicomedy — gets the last laugh after all.
In the era of what’s next in college football, of transferring to find your best deal and securing a bag — and, if it works, winning a championship — the quarterback Texas Tech recruited over is the most important player on the field again.
How about that for The Winter’s Tale?
Destruction, jealousy, tragedy, and yes, a miraculous pivot that changes everything.
“Our guys know Will, they’ve watched him handle his business all offseason,” says Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire. “There will be no surprises.”
Translation: Hammond is the same player who last year stepped in for injured starter Behren Morton, and gave the offense the ability to drive the ball downfield in the pass game, and put defenses in conflict as a tough, willing runner.
That is, until he sustained a season-ending knee injury in late October, and Morton was forced to gut-out the remainder of the season while playing with various injuries. Then the College Football Playoff arrived, Oregon exposed the Red Raiders’ offensive weaknesses, and the billionaires upped the ante.
They were going after Sorsby, the No.1 player in the transfer portal, and the offense wouldn’t look the same again. But a strange thing happened along the way to you get what you pay for.
Texas Tech grew closer through the Sorsby drama. The locker room began to believe in each other, and work with and for each other, and the next thing you know, Hammond had the team.
Despite what you may think or believe, players are resilient. So when spring rolled into summer and Hammond was cleared to play, the team that could be better across both lines of scrimmage and is loaded at the skill positions found itself embracing the black hat role again.
Even though its quarterback is riding in on a stallion story of the season.
“How cool would that be? After everything, Will does what we all know he can do,” said Texas Tech wide receiver Coy Eakin. “Don’t think he hasn’t thought of that.”
Don’t think they all haven’t.
Texas Tech was built to go deep into the CFP with one of the highest-paid rosters in the game. The defensive line could be better than last season’s destructive group, and there’s no deeper running back room in college football.
There are pieces around Hammond to make his job easier, and every significant game on the schedule will be played in Lubbock: Houston, Arizona State, Arizona, TCU.
But at some point, Hammond will have to make big throws in big games and in big moments. Maybe it’s on the road late against Baylor, or in the Big 12 championship game — or in the CFP, where the Red Raiders couldn’t score a lousy point last season in a blowout loss to Oregon.
“We have to prove when the expectations are higher, we can meet them,” Hammond said.
He may as well have been talking about his own journey, and where it now stands. He’s the intriguing subplot to the team America loves to hate, the one player who could turn the whole thing sideways.
Who doesn’t pull for the overlooked and unloved, the forgotten that suddenly becomes the unforgettable? Hammond has been through this his entire career. Dealt with a similar situation in high school, where the overlooked became the indispensable.
And now here we are again.
“To expect anything less than fireworks would be doing a disservice to the work we’ve put into this season,” Hammond said.
About as stand tall, don’t flinch, West Texas as it gets.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB. Listen to him daily, from 12-2 p.m., on 1010XL-Jacksonville.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Forget about Brendan Sorsby. Will Hammond got the last laugh after all | Opinion
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