Since the Roadrunners started football in 2011 there have been 24 different players to record an attempted pass for UTSA. 15 of those 24 have attempted at least 10 passes in their careers. Most of the high number has been because of injuries. What if UTSA's quarterbacks had better injury luck?
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On September 3, 2011 the UTSA Roadrunners finally took the football field for the first time. The Roadrunners received the opening kickoff and after running on two plays they had a 1st and 10 at the Northeastern State 40 yard line. UTSA quarterback Eric Soza took the snap and threw a pass to CheRod Simpson. Simpson caught the pass and was tackled at the Northeastern State 27. That 13-yard pass was the first attempted pass and first completed pass in UTSA history.
Since that pass the Roadrunners have attempted 3,231 more passes and completed 1,691 of those attempts. There have been 24 different players to attempt at least one pass. Included in those 24 are running backs, wide receivers and punters who were attempting trick plays. A total of 15 different Roadrunners have attempted at least 10 passes in their career.
Eric Soza would be the Roadrunners regular quarterback through the end of the 2013 season. Between 2011 and 2013 only five Roadrunners, including Soza, attempted a pass. Soza remains the last Roadrunner quarterback to attempt 300 passes in a season when he threw the ball 377 times in 2013.
Since Soza hung up his shoulder pads the Roadrunners have not had the best of luck with their quarterbacks. What if things had turned out differently? What if the Roadrunners had a continuous line of successful quarterbacks?
What if any one of the QBs in 2014 had stayed healthy?
UTSA entered the 2014 season believing they would have their heir apparent to Soza at the quarterback position. Tucker Carter had been Eric Soza's back up in 2013 and gotten action in five games that season, completing 23 of his 33 attempted passes.
Carter led a quarterback group that included Austin Robinson and Blake Bogenschutz and a Dalton Sturm who was redshirting the 2014 season.
Hopes were high for Carter and the 2014 Roadrunners as our former publisher Mike Craven wrote at the time: "Carter is going to be expected to lead this team to a bowl game and possibly a division title in his first year starting at the FBS level. UTSA returns the most starters in college football and Carter remains the one wildcard on this team."
The first signs of trouble for UTSA arrived when Carter injured his shoulder against Oklahoma State. Austin Robinson filled in for him while he was out. When Robinson was unable to go and after Carter was injured against Rice in November the Roadrunners turned to Blake Bogenschutz, a highly touted QB out of Carthage. By the end of 2014 the Roadrunners had needed a fourth quarterback and so the redshirt for Dalton Sturm was burned so he could be available for the second to last game of the season.
The 2014 Roadrunners went 4-8 in large part due to an inability to get consistent quarterback play. They had the talent to possibly challenge for a better record and a bowl game.
If it had happened a few years later when the new redshirt rules came into effect Sturm could have kept his redshirt but such was life in 2014. Now what might have happened if Carter or Robinson or Bogenschutz had stayed healthy.
First, if Carter had stayed healthy he would have provided senior leadership behind center and would have helped the Roadrunners to possibly win some of the games they lost. A healthy Carter means the Roadrunners might have had a chance at a bowl or a trip to the conference championship game in 2014. The 2016 New Mexico Bowl trip might have been the second or third bowl game, not the school's first.
How might the mid-teens have looked for UTSA with a healthy Carter in 2014?
If Tucker Carter had been able to complete the 2014 season it would have meant that Austin Robinson and Blake Bogenschutz might not have seen as much action as they did in reality. What this means for the 2015 season is that for the second season UTSA enters with a quarterback battle. In reality it was Bogenschutz job as Austin Robinson was moved to safety during 2015 fall camp and then transferred to Houston early in the 2015 season.
If Robinson doesn't move to safety and then transfer then both he and Bogenschutz are in the running for 2015 and the Roadrunners season will go forward with either quarterback under center. There is another possibility for a what if version of 2015 as Dalton Sturm is off of his redshirt with four seasons of eligibility. With a healthy Bogenschutz and Robinson though it might be tough for Sturm to win the starting job so early.
Let's assume the sophomore Bogenschutz is the quarterback in 2015 with Sturm as his backup. Both would probably have seen some action that season but it is possible with consistent quarterback play the Roadrunners are better than the 3-9 record they had in the real 2015 season.
If Bogenschutz stays healthy it is not hard to imagine he is the Roadrunners quarterback for 2016 as well as 2017. A healthy Bogenschutz leading the Roadrunners in 2015-16-17 probably leads the Roadrunners to having better records and maybe more than one bowl trip.
A healthy Bogenschutz also changes the Roadrunners recruiting as they don't have as desperate a need at QB as they did in real life. It also means Roadrunner fans only get one season with Dalton Sturm under center, the 2018 season.
So if the Roadrunners have healthy QBs from 2014-2018 what happens in 2019?
In 2019 the Roadrunners used four different quarterbacks for the second straight year. In the what if timeline they likely don't use as many quarterbacks in 2018 because that would have been redshirt senior Dalton Sturm's final year under center. As he moves on the 2019 what if Roadrunners are looking for his replacement.
The options would be Frank Harris, Jordan Weeks, Cordale Grundy and Lowell Narcisse (For our purposes of this what if we are assuming the quarterbacks who come in don't change, just their luck with injuries).
In real life Narcisse played in 11 games and had the most attempted passes in 2019 with 201. Frank Harris played in four games and had 91 pass attempts. Weeks threw 66 pass attempts in three games and Grundy threw five attempts in two games.
In our what if healthy quarterback timeline, 2019 would have been the first year in UTSA's football history that had more than two likely candidates for starting quarterback.
The Roadrunner's bad luck with quarterbacks in real life has played a part in the struggles to find an offensive identity over the last few years. The poor results of the offensive coordinators also played a part but a good quarterback can serve as a band aid on bad play calling.
If UTSA's luck with quarterbacks was better their timeline of starters might look something like Eric Soza from 2011-13, Tucker Carter in 2014, Blake Bogenschutz from 2015-2017, Dalton Sturm in 2018 and anybody's guess in 2019.
There is no way to know for sure what that continuity might have done for the Roadrunner football fortunes but it might have led to a different outcome in terms of coaching, a better 2014 and 15 might lead Coker to stick around a year or two longer which might mean no Frank Wilson. On the other hand even with the good luck of healthy quarterbacks UTSA's coaching line might have continued as it did in reality.
One thing is certain. Roadrunner fans might not have had to drink as much during the 2014-2019 era with good QB health. Those beers of sadness would have been beers of happiness.
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