IT'S RAINING IN HOUSTON
Hop on 85, drive right past A&M, it’s raining in Houston…
- Drake, musician
In a day and age where everyone and there mothers are hitting the portal, it was refreshing one Sunday morning for this college football fan to wake up and read the following tweet:
First of all, we are so back on Substack now than we can post tweets again. I guess the feud with Elon Musk finally ended. It had been since, what, April 2023?! How did we ever make it this far in the dark?
I almost just want to spam post tweets now that the functionality is back (and probably will, you’ve been warned).
Anyways, as you can see from the tweet, Houston executed a cheeky power move signing three of their corner stone players immediately after their bowl victory this past weekend. I’m sure they had the details hemmed out prior to the game and didn’t negotiate these deals at 2AM Saturday night, nonetheless, the entire operation feels very buttoned up and professional. No scandal, no waiting around, etc., just a quick announcement with good news for the Cougar faithful.
That’s the way to do it in my opinion; and I mean, yeah, I’m sure a lot of programs would love to do it exactly like this, but to be fair it (probably) does require a lot of pesos to make it work.
We’re going to focus on the QB/WR pairing for the purposes of today’s article. CFF players are already familiar with both, and the readers of this publication are very familiar with Amare Thomas, who I wrote about back in 2024 when he was at UAB:
This UAB Blazer Could Legitimately Finish as 2024's WR1... No, Really
I think Tahoe is one of the hidden gems in the country, and I've played a lot of golf around the country.
In what is becoming a pattern with Amare, following a slow start to the year he did begin putting up big numbers midway through the season for the Blazers. He did the same in his first year with Houston, not hitting 20 CFF points scored in a game until October 11th vs. OK State.
For context, he did the exact same thing in 2024 with UAB, netting his first 20 point performance vs. Tulane on October 5th, and then closed out the year strong save for a dud vs. Rice.
With Houston, he opened the year scoring 13, three, and eight points, and then proceeded to score no less than 15 in a game every appearance after, save for one six pointer vs. Arizona State; Nov. 1st onward was a particularly hot stretch, where Thomas scored over 20 points in four of five appearances, and scored a TD in every game during that span.
In fact, if we go back to Oct 11th, Thomas scored 20+ points in six of his last eight appearances. This guys is like the opposite of Will Sheppard when he was at Vandy—he only comes alive during the conference schedule. The antithesis of a “Mr. September”. Mr. October & November + Bowl Games doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, though.
The really good news is that his QB, Connor Weigmann, the former Texas A&M five star, will also be returning. Weigmann followed the advice of Drizzy this past offseason, driving his ass past A&M and on his way into H-Town where the big dogs play.
The move paid dividends for Weigmann and his CFF shareholders. He finishes 2025 averaging over 26.9 PPG including his performance in the bowl appearance, which is pretty good. I always feel like 25-27 PPG is sort of the threshold of a ‘good’ QB season in CFF.
While he isn’t typically thought of as a ‘dual threat’ QB by the CFF community, my man definitely is, rushing for 700 yards and 11 scores in 13 appearances this season. His 355 pass attempts is also a decent (but could be better) 27 per game average.
Yes, to be clear, this isn’t a classic stack pairing where the team throws the ball a lot and the WR1 gets a lot of target share. More like, the team doesn’t throw the ball much, but Amare gets a sizeable chunk of the relatively small pie, enough to make him dangerous in CFF at least, and the QB, Weigmann, does enough on the ground to also make him dangerous.
Coming into the year, I was intrigued by both players, more so Weigmann (you’ll see why in a moment). Amare Thomas was a pleasant surprise, and I’m glad Weigmann is finally cashing in on some of his potential.
Coaching & System: Not Your Usual Suspect
PPG AVERAGE — QB1: 21.25 — WR1: 8.731 (half ppr/five point passing TD)
Head coach Willie Fritz’ average is included in the sub-header above, but I feel like the QB average needs to explained a bit. You’ll see below a breakdown of the individual numbers per season dating back to 2019.
If not for a truly disastrous season in 2024, Fritz’s QB1 average would be a respectable 24-25 PPG. I suppose once Weigmann’s 2025 numbers are factored in it may balance out. All the same, this coach may not be known as an offensive wizard, but he does have a pretty solid track record at QB.
At WR, however, is a different story.
Amare Thomas’ 235 points this past season smashed Fritz’ previous WR1 PPG record. You can see why I say it was quite unexpected, right? There was no precedent for this kind of thing in this system, and thus I cooled on Thomas when he joined the program from UAB.
But as it happens he has carved out a role for himself, and transcended the system. Which, by the way, word to the wise, players who do this are usually good bets to be successful at the next level. It’s rare for this kind of thing to happen.
So while this isn’t a classic stack duo combination from a CFF perspective, there’s enough potential here to warrant some consideration as a drafter next year if you’re wanting to invest heavily in this Houston offence.
The RB, Dean Connors, will be moving on. He’ll take with him 42 targets. Connors sort of has a unique profile as a RB, kind of Max Borghi-esque, for those who get the reference, so maybe those targets end up funnelling back to the WRs in his absence, or maybe Houston finds another pass-catching RB to start next year. Hard to say this early out.
On average, Fritz’ teams will skew heavy run. The closest to a balanced ratio a team under him has finished was 2021 Tulane (45/55 to the run).
So once again, you can see my point that this system is not really one you’re typically looking at as a CFF stack option. The QBs have been able to be successful as dual threat options, but until this year there was not a WR worth rostering in CFF, let alone an elite option.
What does sort of save the scheme in a CFF context is that the pace of play calling is usually pretty good, hovering around average for the FBS level at ~25 seconds per play, though in 2023 Fritz slowed things down pretty dramatically (see Table 4.).
This past year Houston finished with an average of 26.6 second per play, which ranked 77th in the FBS. Certainly, things could be better on this front, but I was expecting worse TBH.
Some Conclusions
As the regular readers know, I do love me some BIG12 for CFF purposes. I think it’s telling that as soon as ol’ Willie found himself in the big boy conference, that his offences almost immediately started printing dividends via the QB and WR. The BIG12 bug is contagious like that.
Though as allude to earlier, it’s also probably the case that both talents are transcending the system to some degree, and are a cut above talent-wise in this conference. Certainly Wiegmann fits that profile as a former starting SEC QB and five star. Resigning both is a huge coup for this program that really can’t be understated.
I did have my theories that perhaps Weigmann would be looking to bounce back up a level following a good year, and that perhaps Amare would either test his hand at the NFL, or also climb the ladder up to the SEC or B1G. Again, huge for Houston to reclaim both.
And they presumably have a lot of pesos tied up in incoming freshman five star QB Kesean Henderson also, from right down the road. It’s a good spot to be in, and a good problem to have: two QBs who could probably start and lead the program to a lot of Ws next year. On that note, it should be stated that Weigmann has proved to be injury prone in the past, so it would not shock me if we see Henderson start a few games next year too (assuming he can win QB2 privileges).
Overall, having viewed this system in some detail now, this writer would be hard-pressed to then turn around and forecast some sort of top-five CFF WR finish for Amare Thomas at WR (from a PPG measurement). I do think it is possible for Weigmann at QB due to his dual threat capabilities.
As for Thomas, well, I’ve been here before, and I’ve learned to temper my expectations with him. I do think he can be in the conversation as a top-10 producer at his position (was already hovering just outside this range in 2025), but it’ll require him to continue to be undeniably exceptional in this system to do so (and maybe do some positive things in September, for once).
In the NIL era of CFB, where teams might as well get as much return on their guys as they can, it’s certainly possible, but it would be pretty wild for a Willie Fritz/Slade Nagle WR1 to top the leaderboards, am I right?
If you’re reading this article with a C2C/Devy interest, as mentioned earlier, if Thomas can continue to transcend the system, however, that’s probably a good indicator of future value at the next level. ◾
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Sample of data from 2018-2024, not including 2020.