National hype new for an Aggie quarterback

Texas A&M quarterback Jerrod Johnson could be in line for national awards this season. (Icon SMI)

By Rusty Burson

In 115 years of Texas A&M football, no Aggies quarterback has ever earned first-team All-America honors.

The last first-team all-conference quarterback was Bucky Richardson in 1991, and the last two-time all-league quarterback was Kevin Murray in the mid-1980s.

Worse yet, a strong case could be made that in a 17-year span from when Richardson left in 1991 until 2008, no A&M quarterback significantly improved as a passer from one year to the next.

That’s why Jerrod Johnson’s accomplishments in 2009 are so extraordinarily refreshing to A&M fans. Not only did Johnson improve, he made dramatic strides, passing for 1,144 more yards and nine more touchdowns in 2009 than he had in 2008. The poised and confident Johnson shattered numerous school records last season, becoming the first player in A&M history to surpass 3,000 yards through the air (3,579).

Yet, for all of his accomplishments, Johnson went largely unnoticed for much of the season because the Aggies played on national television just twice in their first 11 contests. Those two national TV appearances resulted in a 28-point loss to Arkansas and a 55-point loss at Oklahoma.

So, it wasn’t until the final game of the regular season that the country received an opportunity to see Johnson at his best. In a 49-39 loss to No. 2-ranked Texas, Johnson completed 26 of 33 passes for 342 yards and four touchdowns, while also adding 97 rushing yards. In the glow of the national spotlight, Johnson shone as brightly as Texas star Colt McCoy, the 2009 winner of the Davey O’Brien Award for quarterbacks.

With McCoy and Oklahoma’s Sam Bradford now gone to the NFL, Johnson would love nothing more than to be in the running for national awards. Not for his own ego, but rather for A&M’s national reputation.

“(Winning Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year) has crossed my mind in the sense that if I play well enough to win that title, then we should be winning a lot of games,” Johnson said. “That is a cool thing to me as a quarterback. If you win those individual awards, it

means you are winning games, which is my top priority. I want to win a championship with my teammates right now.

“But as an added benefit of winning and playing an exciting style of offense, I hope that my personal success can help Texas A&M attract even better quarterbacks and overall players in the future.”