Texas high school quarterback guru Todd Dodge got what he wanted when Patrick Mahomes of Kansas City and Jalen Hurts of Philadelphia won their conference championship games.
“I really like Joe Burrows,” Dodge laughed, in reference to Cincinnati’s star quarterback, “but I’m not going to root for Joe Burrows over Texas quarterback Patrick Mahomes.”
The Mahomes-Hurts matchup is the first showdown between a pair of Texas high school signal QBs and the latest milestone for a football-mad state once known very much for Earl Campbell and Eric Dickerson, the quarterbacks of the future. Handing over to the Pro Football Hall. Yash is running behind.
Dodge, a recently retired high school coach who won seven state championships, played a large role in beginning the change around 1980. He was the quarterback 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 he cooled off 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 — there are a lot of them — as early as seventh grade, always with the goal of being able to flourish in varsity.
Before Dodge, Art Briles and the late Sonny Detmer came along, the focus was generally on finding the best running back and building from there.
“Jalen Hurts from 40 years ago will be the next big comeback in the Southwest Conference,” said Dodge, who ran a quarterback training program in retirement. “Somewhere along the way, his father handed him the ball and he started throwing it.”
Indeed, coach Averyan 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 a pedigree in throwing as the son of former major league pitcher Pat Mahomes, and his strong arm was evident long before Whitehouse became the starter in East Texas.
The Chiefs traded Mahomes to go 10th overall in 2017, named him the starter a year later in the offseason, and saw him become MVP that year and Super Bowl winner the next.
“I think in Texas it’s been a program of building football players for a long time,” said Mahomes, whose Super Bowl matchup against Hurts will be the first between two black quarterbacks. “Still great running back, still great receivers, great tight ends, whatever you want to say.”
The most recent Super Bowl-winning quarterback from Texas is Matthew Stafford, who played at the Dallas enclave of Highland Park before moving to Georgia and being drafted No. 1 overall by Detroit in 2009.
His prolific career with the Lions mostly went nowhere prior to his trade to the Rams, which was immediately followed by a title the previous season. His high school coach, four-time state title winner Randy Allen, has a quarterback training program he believes he started after seeing Dodge conduct a coaching clinic.
Once Texas became fertile ground for quarterbacks, it was only natural for the game to develop in the college and later in the pros.
“College coaches want to win, number one,” said Allen, the winningest active coach in Texas. “And number two, they know if they’ve got a Texas high school quarterback, that he’s probably played in front of big crowds. He’s probably played against big competition. He’s probably had great high school coaching and he’s probably a freshman.” Ready to play as individual.
One of Allen’s Highland Park teams was one round away from facing Mahomes in the Texas playoffs a decade earlier, but Mahomes’ team lost.
Mahomes never made a deep playoff run before thriving at Texas Tech in the 1990s under Kliff Kingsbury, a prolific Texas high school QB.
Allen, Dodge and Mahomes all cited the expansion of offseason 7-on-7 football as an important part of the Texas quarterback’s development. Dozens of tournaments across the state culminate in a state championship event each summer in College Station, home of Texas A&M.
Dodge also believes it helped when pass-happy teams began winning state championships. In a five-year stretch at Southlake Carroll, where son Riley is now coach, the elder Dodge had a record of 79–1 with four state titles in the state’s largest classification.
The other three titles for Dodge came at Austin Westlake. Prior to his arrival, that school produced the first two Super Bowl winning QBs from Texas in Drew Brees (New Orleans, 2009 season) and Nick Foles (Philadelphia, 2017).
Hurts says high school highlights may have something to do with mindset about the situation. A regional cable network for Texas carries a live scoreboard show every Friday night, well into the six-week postseason that is capped by championship-game crowds reaching 50,000 at the home of the Dallas Cowboys.
“Texas is so big,” Hurts said. “I turn on the TV and see, you had a Texas high school football late-night show. It goes all over the state. You look at what (Mahomes) is doing.
Western Pennsylvania is also famous for quarterbacks, with Hall of Famers Dan Marino, Joe Montana, Joe Namath, Jim Kelly, and Johnny Unitas among the products. Mahomes is aware of this – because he has teammates from a state that takes its high school football just as seriously.
Mahomes said, “I brag to all my PA guys because they brag that they have the best state for football because of history.” “But I’m like, we’re talking about the present, and Texas is great right now.”
Mahomes has a point. Texas is already guaranteed to be the high school home of four of the last six Super Bowl winning quarterbacks.