SPICE PRODUCTION IN THE DESERT AT AN ALL TIME HIGH
Kill them all.
- Baron Harkonnen, Dune I (2021)
Longtime assistant Rabban has worked his entire adult life with the Red Raiders organization. He’s dedicated himself fully, including investing whatever is left of his minimum wage paycheck into the Raiders NIL collective each month.
When it comes time to choose between a Caniac combo order at Raising Cane’s to eat for dinner, or the NIL collective, Rabban never chooses wrong.
“Eating is overrated,” he says. “I get all the nourishment I need from watching my Raiders beat the shit out of TCU.”
He is the definition of dedication. He’s been through it all with this club—the Crabtree game vs. Texas in ‘08, the record breaking years with Mike Leach’s Air Raid offence, and all the other heartbreaking moments in between when Tech came up short of a B12 conference championship.
So, you can imagine that he was thrilled when the baron himself—Cody “The Baron” Campbell started immersing himself more in the day to day operations. 2025 was a good first start by all accounts, but of course, Rabban was still nervous as a spice harvester when the sands start to rumble when it came time to deliver the news to the baron.
He waddles his way through the world class facilities, where he finds the baron steeped in a spice bath to mull over the offseason.
“23-0. Oregon.”
The baron unveils himself from beneath the pool of dark liquids.
(Baron) So it is done, finally.
Send word to ExxonMobil, to begin selling our crude oil reserves—but slowly.
We don’t want the price to fall. You have no idea how much it cost me to bring such a force to bare here. Now I only have one requirement—transfer portal signees! So squeeze Rabban, squeeze hard.
“What about the haters that say all we do is buy mercenaries?”
Kill them all.
*drifts back into tub*
Anyways, in case you missed it, Texas Tech’s latest transfer haul apparently includes a lucrative five million dollar deal for former Cincinnati QB Brendan Sorsby.
Having rostered Sorsby during the 2024 season in the Golden Pig Invitational, and also having watched Dune Part I & II at least a dozen times each, I have an intimate familiarity with the players involved here.
The first thing I’ll say is that Sorsby was an incredibly frustrating QB to hold in 2024 CFF. His performance was very inconsistent. When the Bearcats played against a weak team, he generally did well. When they played solid or good teams, he struggled.
So naturally, I placed him on my do-not-draft list this past offseason, and was perturbed by him improving his performance drastically in the CFF context. After averaging ~23 PPG in ‘24, he improved his average to ~28 PPG in ‘25. He still suffered from inconsistent performance, but on the whole, was a much better player.
I mean seriously, consider for a moment my 2024 drafted QB room: KU’s Jalon Daniels, Cincy’s Sorsby, TCU’s Josh Hoover, and what’s his face who was at WVU at the time. The Mountaineer regressed, which, fair enough, happens. The other three… don’t even get me started on these jokers. My confidence in all three proved to be premature, as each came back to the same school in 2025 and performed much better. Annoying.
Coming back to Sorsby, staying in the BIG12 seems like a good idea from my perspective, as Texas Tech will enjoy another smooth schedule in ‘26. And I assume backup QB Will Hammond will be out for at least most of the offseason while he recovers, so it should be all but guaranteed that Sorsby wins the starting job (five million dollars helps as well).
(BTW, I wrote about Hammond a long time ago, in case you’re interested)
Despite a long history of apeshit production in Air Raid offences, it may surprise the reader to know that Tech hasn’t really had an elite CFF QB in several seasons. This is mostly due to Behren Morton, as he has been the starter for the last three seasons, and he just hasn’t been very good (or able to stay healthy).
Part of this tenure being with the QB whisperer himself—Zach Kittley, who made his way over following Bailey Zappe’s record breaking season at WKU in 2021.
But even before him, you have Henry Colombi (yuck) in 2021, and Alan Bowman 2018 & 20 (also yuck). Ditto for Mr. Jett Duffey in 2019.
So, it’s actually fair to say that Tech hasn’t had a player with elite pedigree as a CFF asset in quite some time. For context, if Sorsby were to average 28 PPG again this season with the Raiders, that’d be the highest scoring Tech QB since at least 2017, but probably more like since 2016 with Patty Mahomes.
Coaching & System
QB1 PPG AVERAGE — HC: 17.1 — OC: 23.91 (five point passing)
I had some optimism this offseason that newly instated OC Mack Leftwich would bring some of the Texas State QB voodoo magic over to Lubbock and help Morton get over the hump, but alas, even he couldn’t drag that sad sack to glory.
Leftwich does not have an extended history of play calling, but the two seasons he had prior to this year were pretty good at Texas State. His QB in 2024, Jordan McCloud, finished the year averaging 25.6 PPG, and the QB before that—the ageless wonder, TJ Finley—had a career year averaging just over 22 PPG.
What may be surprising is that as far as tendencies, Leftwich’s Texas State offences skewed heavier to the run (55/45 both seasons). McGuire, who hasn’t been the primary play caller on offence since he’s been at Tech, has a three year average of about 48/52 split in favour of the pass (not suspiring considering former OC Kittley’s offence).
Additionally, in his first year as OC, Leftwich ran plays at a clip of 23.8 seconds per, which ranked 19th in the FBS, and an average of 77 plays per game, which ranked fifth.
It’s clear that the ingredients are here to produce a very productive signal caller in CFF. With how many plays they run, and how much better Tech should be compared to the average B12 program, the QB position should in theory be one that is very lucrative to hold.
Some Final Thoughts
I would think that Sorsby would have been a highly coveted asset at QB in CFF drafts this offseason regardless of a move to Tech. However, the transfer destination is a good one, and so he’ll probably see an even higher valuation among the average drafter.
He already averaged 28 PPG the previous season, so that puts him in elite company as a returnee.
Unfortunately, that means I probably won't have any shares of this player, as I usually don’t spend high draft capital at the QB position. Very rarely are the highly coveted guys at QB the ones who end up scoring the most points by season’s end, but Sorsby certainly feels like one of the better candidates to do so in 2026.
I really like the fit, and the supporting cast around him is sure to be strong as well (kidnappings in Venezuela notwithstanding).
If I didn’t already have a checkered past with Sorsby, I might have had some more nice things to say, but this guy has lost me more games than I care to admit and thus I’m happy to observe his success from afar. Best of luck to him and whoever drafts him next year! ◾
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Sample from 2018-2024 excluding 2020.