Sports
Timothy Bella/America Tonight
LUBBOCK, Texas — A year ago this month, Davis Webb, then just an 18-year-old true freshman, was named starting quarterback for the Texas Tech Red Raiders. He couldn’t stop losing weight. In a three-day stretch last August, Webb, who normally weighs about 210 pounds, dropped more than 40 pounds because of a violent stomach illness.
“If I breathed something in, I threw it up,” he says. “Both ways.”
The skinny freshman would eventually lose, regain and lose his starting job before leading the team to a convincing Holiday Bowl victory in December 2013. Webb, who quietly had one of the best seasons for a freshman quarterback in NCAA history, admits that his confidence wouldn’t have been there if his coach hadn’t called and texted him every day to assure him he was his guy.
Fast-forward a year. Halfway through a Monday quarterbacks’ meeting, Kliff Kingsbury acknowledges that it’s the first day of classes. Although they’re just days away from the first game of the season, he takes a break from the film session and pointing his red laser pointer to ask his slew of signal callers what’s been the best part of their day. One player says he found out that Jimmy John’s, the popular sandwich chain, now delivers, much to the delight of a couple of other players. Kingsbury, the program’s 35-year-old head coach, smiles and shakes his head before returning to film. The meeting wraps up in an efficient 22 minutes with a simple message to his quarterbacks, specifically Webb, the program’s unquestioned offensive leader, sitting to Kingsbury’s left.
“The ball shouldn’t touch the ground today,” Kingsbury says.
It’s the early play of Webb — and how his relationship with Kingsbury has evolved — that has fans even outside the south plains of Texas buzzing. With college football kicking off another season this weekend, much of the offseason has been spent on the NCAA’s institutional and cultural conflicts, particularly from the ruling in the Ed O’Bannon case, the first push toward medical monitoring in the concussion debate and the increased autonomy among college athletics’ biggest, most profitable programs. But when it comes to on-the-field activities, the personal relationship between a head coach and his quarterback has become increasingly important, especially in a period that has seen a spike in high-profile transfer quarterbacks among Power Five programs.
Now Kingsbury and Webb, even in just one year together, have become a prime example of how the relationship has evolved and how that plays out in football-crazy communities like Lubbock every year.
While the narrative of Kingsbury’s rise has been dominated by his swag — his being the youngest head coach in a Power Five college football conference, his resemblance to actor Ryan Gosling, his active presence on social media — the on-the-field legend that he built in West Texas is usually forgotten. Walking out of the second-year head coach’s office is a reminder of the aura surrounding Kingsbury and the expectations for the program’s quarterbacks. The case of quarterback accomplishments, from passing records to national honors, is an astounding 15-year stretch unmatched by any other program in the country. It’s a stretch of prolific offense that has had the Red Raiders as the No. 1 offense in the country six times in the last 15 years, yielding three Sammy Baugh Trophies, awarded annually to college football’s best passer. And it was Kingsbury, the 2002 Sammy Baugh winner, who started it all.
At the beginning of practice, with Lil’ Wayne and Drake’s “Love Me” blaring from the speakers and bouncing off the trees along University Avenue, Kingsbury lets out a string of motivational phrases, from “Let’s go!” to “Turn it up!” He heads toward Webb and talks about what they want to run for the first part of practice. These interactions with Webb aren’t much different from when he was the offensive coordinator for Houston’s Case Keenum, one of the best statistical passers in NCAA history, and Texas A&M’s Johnny Manziel, one of the most dynamic players in recent history. From there, Webb runs plays at a breakneck pace, no play lasting longer than seven seconds before every player runs back to his spot to set up the next play. Teammates hoot and holler at the speed, something Big 12 opponents have been trying to figure out for the last 15 years.
“There has been some sort of a fascination in Lubbock based on when coach [Mike] Leach got here and the prominence he pushed toward that position,” Kingsbury says. “I do think this community expects there to be a great Tech quarterback every year.”
It’s hard to talk about Kingsbury’s relationship as coach with Webb without talking about his relationship as a player with the head coach nicknamed “the Pirate.”
The hall of accomplishments is littered with trophies and records from Texas Tech teams past, with a high number of them coming from 2000 to 2009. It’s no coincidence that this was the period that Leach roamed the sidelines of Jones AT&T Stadium. Inside the football training facility, there is one section set aside for Leach, who holds the school record for wins, noting his “unconventional methods and explosive offense.” What isn’t mentioned is Leach’s much-covered departure from the program almost five years ago and the effort to reach his level of consistency again.
Kliff Kingsbury
head coach, Texas Tech
But Kingsbury is open and candid about how much Leach meant to him as a player and still means to him as a coach. Kingsbury saw his greatest success as a player under Leach, culminating in a 5,000-yard, 45-touchdown campaign in 2002, the year Kingsbury was the first of three Red Raider quarterbacks under Leach to take home the Sammy Baugh Trophy.
“Mike Leach is unlike every coach in the history of college football,” Kingsbury says. “It opened up my eyes to doing things in terms of coaching and a different way of motivating players, to be honest. I still carry over a lot of those lessons.”
Speaking with “America Tonight,” Leach, now the head coach at Washington State, points all the credit to Kingsbury for building Texas Tech as a destination for quarterbacks.
“I don’t think people truly realize how important Kliff was in building the foundations for all of the success that we had at Tech,” Leach says. “Together we set a standard that the quarterbacks that followed were expected to measure up to.”
For Leach, the quarterback culture that was established at Tech during his tenure came from building a relationship with an expectation that the quarterbacks would watch more film and work harder than the rest of the team. When they hit the field, Leach says, there was never any doubt that the Tech quarterbacks worked the hardest of anyone on the team and sparked a work ethic for the rest of the team to follow.
“The payoff was that if everyone worked together, they would lead a group that would be one of the national leaders in offense, passing and scoring,” Leach says.
In his relationship with Leach, as well as with Kevin Sumlin during his stops at Houston and Texas A&M, Kingsbury has shown how a healthy, personal relationship with his quarterbacks can pay off in the long term too. (Keenum is still in the NFL, and Manziel was a first-round pick in the 2014 NFL draft.) Kingsbury sees the same potential in Webb.
“Davis and I are getting on the same wavelength about what he’s thinking on the field,” Kingsbury says. “And when you get that chemistry, you get that magic.”
Midway through practice, the quarterbacks split off to work with Kingsbury. Webb, now the most experienced quarterback on the roster, leads them in every drill. In the ladder drill his footwork is crisp in every motion, and he drills a tight spiral through a net. Webb does it again. And again. And again. And again. Kingsbury looks on and can only smile.
For Webb, the past year has been anything but predictable. The early illness, coupled with his losing his job to walk-on Baker Mayfield, caused Webb to slip into doubt. When Mayfield had a dominant performance against SMU and cemented his place, at least momentarily, as the starter, Kingsbury had a talk with Webb that continues to resonate with the young quarterback.
“From the beginning, Coach told me I was going to be the best quarterback for this program. He said, ‘You have the chance to be the best quarterback to ever play here and play 15 years in the NFL. But now isn’t your time yet,’” Webb says. “I took that to heart. I take everything personal, so after that meeting I remember thinking, ‘I’m going to prove you wrong.’”
Whatever doubt was still lingering in Webb would soon dissipate once he stepped onto the field, turning in what was one of the more underrated statistical seasons for a true freshman quarterback in NCAA history. Playing in just 10 of Tech’s 13 games, he finished with 20 touchdowns and ended up in the top 20 in the country in total quarterback rating. Yet it wasn’t until his breakout performance in the Holiday Bowl against No. 16 Arizona State that the skinny kid from Prosper, Texas, gained a national profile. Webb, who threw for more than 400 yards and four touchdowns, had arrived.
He’s quick to point to Kingsbury as supporting him throughout his early struggles. Kingsbury is also the reason Webb stayed committed to Texas Tech, even after Tommy Tuberville, the program’s previous coach, whom Webb committed to, left for Cincinnati.
“With Coach, he’s my best friend and an older figure and idol I’ve looked up to, with him calling the plays and having that swag,” Webb says. “He’s a trendsetter. There’s no one like him in the country.”
It’s this close relationship between a coach and his quarterback that puts Tech in a unique position. With Kingsbury having played for Tech just a dozen years ago and the connections he’s made during a fascinating football life — playing for Leach in college, playing for Bill Belichick and being teammates and friends with Tom Brady in the NFL, coaching Manziel during his Heisman Trophy campaign — the 35-year-old coach is trying to use his time with Webb as a learning experience for his sophomore starter.
“I see it as more of a big brother, little brother relationship,” says Kingsbury, who considers Webb a potential top-five draft pick in a couple of years. “‘I’ve been in your shoes. I’ve made all the mistakes. Let me show you how I would have done it this time around and what you can do. And don’t do the same mistakes I made.’ I try to share it as personally and as openly as I can.”
After getting in a short toss with Webb, mixing in jokes about the earlier excitement over how Jimmy John’s now delivers, Kingsbury brings his offense into a mini huddle. Practice is almost over, but he reminds them of the week ahead before the opener against Central Arkansas on Saturday.
“Make it count every f---ing day this week,” he tells them.
It’s moments like these that are lost among the attention given to videos of Kingsbury dancing after practices, his taking pictures at the Preakness with Brady and Mike Tyson, his stories of flirting with single mothers of potential recruits and his challenging Beyoncé to the ALS ice bucket challenge.
Afterward, he keeps talking to Webb. Webb has Kingsbury’s ear and has his coach’s full attention — much like when Kingsbury was here with Leach. It’s a conversation between a quarterback-turned-coach and a quarterback hoping to have a breakout campaign. It started last year, and it doesn’t look as though it’s stopping anytime soon.
“You ready?” Kingsbury asks his team, with Webb directly to his right. “I’m ready!”
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