As SMU prepares for its annual Spring Game this Saturday at Ford Stadium, the most pressing question for the future of Mustang football is who will be taking their snaps this autumn.
During the 2014 season, returning quarterbacks Garrett Krstich, Neal Burcham, and Matt Davis all saw significant playing time during the difficult 1-11 (1-7 AAC) season.
Burcham, a former three-star Rivals prospect, began the 2014 season as the incumbent starter. In 2013, Burcham started in the Mustangs’ last two games, filling in for the injured Garrett Gilbert. The highly-touted Burcham’s 2014 season proved short-lived. He suffered a season-ending elbow injury in the second game, a 43-6 loss against North Texas.
Burcham, now a junior, may well miss the 2015 season too. In February, the Dallas Morning News reported that Burcham suffered a torn ACL and is likely to miss the entire season.
Senior Garrett Krstich and junior Matt Davis will most likely compete for the starting job. Krstich started four games for the Mustangs in 2014, completing 54.7 percent of his passes and throwing for 855 yards with two touchdowns and seven interceptions before being benched in favor of Davis.
Krstich, who is a classic, drop-back passer, took a beating in his brief tenure as starting quarterback. He was sacked 16 times in four consecutive defeats against Texas A&M, TCU, Cincinnati, and Memphis, the murders’ row of non-conference and conference foes the Mustangs faced to finish the first half of their season.
Davis took the helm for the last five games of the 2014 season. In terms of passing statistics, Davis put up strikingly similar numbers to Krstich, completing 54.3 percent of his passes and throwing for 855 yards with three touchdowns and five interceptions.
What separates Davis from Krstich is Davis’ outstanding ability as a rusher. On 103 carries, Davis ran for 613 yards, averaging 5.7 yards per carry and scoring four touchdowns. The Tyler Junior College and Texas A&M transfer Davis guided SMU to its only win of the 2014 season, a 27-20 road win over UConn in the finale. Davis ran for 191 yards in the come-from-behind victory.
The early enrollment of Ben Hicks, the most highly-touted player in Chad Morris’ inaugural recruiting class, adds a new variable to the SMU quarterback contest. Could Morris go with the freshman stand-out as his starting quarterback if he impresses at the spring game? As Morris remakes the program in his own image, might he entrust the offense to the first player who signed on to join him in Dallas?
The 6-foot-2, pro-style quarterback Hicks is the only early-enrollee among the 22 recruits in Morris’ first SMU recruiting class. It is unclear how much the former Midway Waco standout will play in the spring game. One would expect Krstich and Davis to take the lion’s share of snaps, but that remains an unknown as well.
In three days, SMU football fans will, hopefully, have a clearer sense of how the quarterback competition is shaking down.
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