{"id":24154,"date":"2025-10-28T06:19:18","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T06:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/24154\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T06:19:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T06:19:18","slug":"texas-tech-loses-qb-will-hammond-for-season-behren-morton-ready-to-go-for-critical-big-12-stretch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/24154\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Tech loses QB Will Hammond for season, Behren Morton ‘ready to go’ for critical Big 12 stretch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Down a pair of impactful players to season-ending injuries, No. 13\u00a0Texas Tech<\/a> enters the home stretch near the top of the Big 12 standings on uneasy footing within its quarterback room inside the College Football<\/a> Playoff race.<\/p>\n

Redshirt freshman quarterback Will Hammond<\/a>, who has filled in with precise execution this season for injured starter Behren Morton<\/a>, suffered a torn ACL in his right knee during Saturday’s win over Oklahoma State<\/a>,\u00a0according to ESPN<\/a>, and will miss the rest of the campaign.<\/p>\n

Texas Tech (7-1, 4-1)\u00a0already lost defensive tackle<\/a> Skyler Gill-Howard<\/a> to ankle surgery earlier this month and moves forward into a season-defining November stretch with uncertainty at the most important position on offense, too.<\/p>\n

Hammond’s non-contact injury in the first half forced Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire to go with third-team option Mitch Griffis<\/a>, a senior transfer from Wake Forest,<\/a> for the remainder of contest. He finished with 172 yards two total touchdowns, helping the Red Raiders grab their first shutout win over a Big 12 opponent since 2005.<\/p>\n

That was the first game action since 2023 for Griffis, who joined this offseason as an emergency No. 3 behind Morton and Hammond in Lubbock.<\/p>\n

McGuire confirmed to CBS Sports on Monday that Morton will return to the starting lineup and is “ready to go” for Saturday’s game at Kansas State<\/a> after missing Texas Tech’s last two games with a lower-body ailment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Unbeaten across six starts this season, Morton is completing 68.4% of his passes for 1,501 yards and 13 touchdowns with three interceptions. Banged up since early September, Morton has only been sacked six times, but has taken a number of hits from the pocket.<\/p>\n

“We felt good about Will and Mitch,” McGuire said after the win<\/a> over Oklahoma State. “We wanted to get (Morton) as healthy as we can. If something crazy would have happened with Mitch and it was a competitive game, then he would have been able to go in.”<\/p>\n

The Red Raiders host unbeaten and 10th-ranked BYU<\/a> on Nov. 8, then UCF<\/a> the following week. Texas Tech gets an open date prior to its regular-season finale at West Virginia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Winning out puts Texas Tech in the Big 12 Championship Game, but another loss likely ends that hope for a program that went all-in this spring in the transfer portal<\/a>\u00a0after signing one of the nation’s top-rated hauls.<\/p>\n

Kansas State, one of the league’s preseason favorites, has turned around a disappointing 2-4 start with consecutive wins to pull within two games of conference-leading BYU and Cincinnati<\/a> in the Big 12 standings.<\/p>\n

Wildcats quarterback Avery Johnson<\/a> had seven total touchdowns without a turnover during wins over TCU<\/a> and Kansas<\/a> this month and will be a test for Texas Tech’s top-rated defense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Down a pair of impactful players to season-ending injuries, No. 13\u00a0Texas Tech enters the home stretch near the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24155,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7092,261,1893,27,29,28,415,7091],"class_list":{"0":"post-24154","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-behren-morton","9":"tag-college-football","10":"tag-mitch-griffis","11":"tag-texas","12":"tag-texas-headlines","13":"tag-texas-news","14":"tag-texas-tech-red-raiders","15":"tag-will-hammond"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}