Red Towel Roundtable: Who is the Best FBS Quarterback in Hilltopper History
Since moving to FBS in 2007, WKU has had an impressive litany of signal callers. With Bailey Zappe approaching a record-breaking season, we wondered: Who is the best WKU QB of the FBS era?
Wednesday, we decided to have some fun in what has otherwise been a quiet week and ask a simple yet almost impossible question.
The WKU quarterback litany, on the whole, has been fairly impressive with three players who could feasibly claim the throne for greatest WKU QB ever.
We as a writing staff had so much fun debating this topic, that we wanted to move it out into the open for all of you to see.
Jared Rosdeutscher, Editor
Looking at this great quarterback debate, it’s hard for me to look at it unbiasedly.
I was a student at WKU during Doughty’s best two seasons and I never thought I’d see the Tops get a quarterback his caliber again or someone that could be better than he was but if I’m being honest, I think Zappe is a little better.
Obviously stats are slightly in Zappe’s favor but, looking at pure talent and athleticism, I think Zappe is a little more athletic than Doughty was but they’re very close as far as actual throwing power and accuracy. One thing to remember with Doughty is that he also had a strong run game to work with while this season, the offense is definitely geared towards Zappe with more passes.
Doughty might be taller but Zappe is more athletic than him in my opinion and can do more with his legs than Doughty was capable of doing. It’s like comparing apples to oranges but I think that they’re both amazing and if you put Zappe on the 2014–2015 teams the record would be the same and if you put Doughty on this year’s team, they’d be the same record too (except maybe that goal-line pick against UTSA Zappe had is reversed).
Ultimately I think Zappe is slightly better than Doughty, I just wish we could have him for six seasons.
Jacob Gary, Staff Writer
Zappe is my choice because I think along with the ability to read a defense and deliver a ball with excellent timing, Zappe is a little more athletic than my runner up, Doughty. Zappe has a chance to break some of Doughty’s records this year, too.
Matt McCay, Staff Writer
First of all, all three (of Doughty, White and Zappe) are truly great. An argument could be made for all three. If it’s greatness by quantity, no quarterback compares to Brandon Doughty. Duh. And I love that guy. He went from this goofy freshman that sounded like a drill bit every time he dropped back to an absolute man of a leader and on-field performer battling all kinds of setbacks and trials. And Mike White. Good lord. Gun freaking slinger. Stronger arm than Brandon. A little taller. More NFL upside. Dealt with much less talent and produced gaudy numbers despite having zero help.
But if I’m talking who has done the most while accounting for who may have had the least? Doesn’t it have to be Zappe (if he continues at this pace)? I mean, Brandon and Mike averaged way over 300 yards per game in each of their last two seasons. Little known fact: Brandon actually threw way more than Mike did in his last two years, but also Mike had much less talent around him. Brandon’s 2015 team was an embarrassment of riches. Mike’s performance in 2016 was an exceptional overachievement, but his work in 2017 despite everything was even better. But let me ask you this: What does Bailey Zappe have around him? He does have a better head coach than White had for his last year. But every other year, the other two had Jeff freaking Brohm. He does have Jerreth Sterns and Mitchell Tinsley (and others), who granted could and will go down as two of the greatest ever. Sterns will almost certainly go down with the best single season ever. Zappe has DeAngelo Malone, who is clearly an all-time great. But even he is not his statistical best this season, given that he’s basically had to play as a hybrid lineman most of the year. And the defense has improved of late. But Zappe is on the cusp of a conference championship with a defense that didn’t exist the first half of the year. He also has no running game. He has no productive tight end after game one, something White and Doughty always had at least two of.
So fathom this: He has Brandon Doughty’s defense from 2014, he has Mike White’s running game from 2017, he has no safety blanket, he doesn’t have Jeff Brohm whispering sweet nothings, and he’s throwing for 40 yards per game more than either of them ever did while also rushing for positive yardage with multiple touchdowns, which neither of them ever did, either. The guy could possibly set the NCAA record for single season passing yards if the Tops end up playing 14 games. He needs to simply get his current average per game to beat out the all-time record by a couple of first downs. If he wants to get to 6,000 yards, he needs to average 457.5 passing yards per game, something that is not inconceivable. What was the most White or Doughty ever did? 5,055 by Doughty in 2015. Zappe could finish that off in the regular season. Zappe needs eight touchdowns to set the single season record for touchdowns. He could possibly break that after 12 games, as well. He also has the best TD/INT ratio of any of the three’s seasons at 6:1.
Listen, I love Brandon Doughty. This guy is also the most athletic and (mid-play) creative of the three, as well as being a better natural leader. This is not an attack on anyone else. This is just a clear and emphatic endorsement of the best single-season QB to ever don the red and white: Bailey Zappe.
Alex Sherfield, Staff Writer
The FBS era at WKU has seen a carousel of different quarterbacks and their styles. While most can argue that Bailey Zappe & Mike White are the most prolific as of late but without a doubt in my mind, Brandon Doughty sticks out as a favorite to me.
In my underclassman years of 2010–2015, it was an interesting period of events post-transition. With his first two years being shortened by injuries, Doughty’s talent began to shine under Bobby Petrino during the 2013 season. The ball club under his command not only saw back-to-back defeats over in-state SEC counterpart Kentucky but posting an 8–4 record. In the Brohm years of 2014–2015, Doughty threw for 94 touchdowns and won 27 games in his career on the Hill. He was later drafted in 2016 to the Miami Dolphins.
The adversity he faced was not easy. From injuries to becoming one of the highest-rated passers in college football at the time was a testament to other WKU players about how resiliency goes a long way.
Learning two different systems in three years was also proven difficult at times but winning a Conference USA championship AND being ranked in the top 25 reaped the benefits. If you’re going to mention who’s the best quarterback in the FBS era of Hilltopper football, Doughty is a solid favorite for current and future discussions.
Fletcher Keel, Editor
I can’t believe no one even thought to throw Kawaun Jakes into this debate.
/dead pans/
No, that isn’t a joke. No other player in WKU history was in a higher-profile position and saw the lowest of lows, at one point saying after a game that he had no confidence in himself as an athlete, only to be at the helm of the program’s first ever winning season at the FBS level and then followed it up not only with another winning year, but the program’s first ever bowl appearance.
Jakes set a single-season (22, 2012) and career (51) touchdown records as well as set a program mark with a single-season completion percentage of 64.1% in 2012.
Not to mention was under center during the Tops’ win over Kentucky in 2012, a momentous win in just about every way.
Oh yeah, he also did that with this guy named Bobby Rainey in the backfield from 2009–2011.
While Jakes won’t be remembered in WKU history nearly as much as any of the guys you’ve heard about up to this point, do stop to think and remember he very much walked (and scraped and broke just about every bone in his body) so future WKU quarterbacks couldn’t just run, but fly.
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