Joey McGuire leaves no doubt as to who will be Texas Tech’s starting QB in 2025.

Speaking to the local media on Monday, Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire was definitive when it came to discussing who his starting quarterback will be in 2025.

There’s nothing that college football fans love more than offseason drama at the quarterback position. That’s understandable given the importance of the position. Even fans of programs with fantastic options at the QB spot will debate whether that position could be upgraded during the offseason. Texas Tech fans are no different.

Though the program is set to return senior starter Behren Morton and highly-touted backup Will Hammond, many around Raiderland believe that the program should entertain the idea of trying to upgrade the position, especially given the massive NIL spending spree the program has gone on since the end of last season. However, on Tuesday, Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire shut down any talk of making a change at the game’s most important position.

As he and Morton met with the local media after a spring practice, McGuire addressed the recent rumors that have suggested that Texas Tech might be interested in bringing in former Tennessee starting QB Nico Iamaleava, who just recently entered the portal after being unable to negotiate an NIL raise with the Volunteers.

Without specifically mentioning Iamaleava, McGuire made it clear that Tech is not interested in any transfer quarterback.

“But a lot of people have Tweeted out,” he said, “and I’m not going to comment on who the quarterback is, but our quarterback is in this room. You know, and we got a great quarterback room with Will Hammond and, Mitch [Griffis], and Holden Phillips.

“We were at no point, at any time, in conversations with anybody about a quarterback, without a doubt.”

Most plugged-in Red Raiders assumed that the social media rumors surrounding Iamaleava were pure speculation on the part of people outside of the Texas Tech biosphere who were simply throwing McGuire’s program out as a possible destination because of Tech’s newfound status as one of the big NIL spenders in the sport.

However, there is a faction of the Texas Tech fan base that is not sold on Morton as a potential championship quarterback. After all, he’s yet to have a 4,000-yard passing season and in his career, he’s never completed more than 63.3% of his passes in a season.

Now, every Red Raider must admit that Morton deserves a bit of credit for playing through the past two seasons despite dealing with a significant injury to his throwing shoulder. That injury, sustained in week four of the 2023 season, was so severe that in 2023, Morton was often held out of practices just so he could recover enough to play on Saturdays. Additionally, it required major offseason surgery following the end of the 2024 regular season, causing Morton to miss the Liberty Bowl against Arkansas and all spring practices.

Thus, it is fair to believe that we haven’t seen what Morton is fully capable of. In fact, it isn’t a stretch to suggest that he’s not started and finished a single game at Texas Tech in which he was 100% healthy.

In 2022, when he made his college debut as a redshirt freshman, he suffered a high ankle sprain at Oklahoma State, an injury that nagged him for the remainder of that season, eventually causing him to return to the sidelines. Then, for the past two seasons, every start he’s made has been impacted by the sprained right shoulder that he initially hurt at West Virginia in 2023 in the same game that Tyler Shough was lost for the season with a broken leg.

Of course, that injury history is part of why some fans are skeptical about Morton as the player to lead this program to a Big 12 championship. However, to feel as if one can judge him as a quarterback based on the past two seasons is a bit unfair.

What’s more, it wasn’t as if Morton was bad in 2024. Rather, he was solid. He averaged 277.9 yards per game through the air and tossed 27 TDs with only eight interceptions.

The problem is that he hasn’t put up eye-popping numbers or pulled off miraculous feats the way some former Red Raider quarterbacks have. Because of the success of QBs like Kliff Kingsbury, BJ Symons, Graham Harrell, and Patrick Mahomes II, the bar is high with fans in West Texas.

While Morton hasn’t been asked to be a gunslinger like some of his Red Raider predecessors, he does need to take his game to another level this fall. The expectation is for Texas Tech to at least play in the Big 12 Championship Game, something the program has never done, and for that to happen, Morton doesn’t have to be a hero, but he does have to be a top-tier QB in the conference.

While some fans will remain skeptical about whether the senior has that in him, it is clear that his head coach is 100% in his corner. Thus, there should be no debate about who will lead the