TEXAS \u2014 Frisco Emerson football alum and West Virginia quarterback Michael Hawkins Jr. made his return to Dallas-Fort Worth for the third time in his college career, but before this past weekend had yet to come away with a win. Last Saturday in Fort Worth, however, Hawkins changed that alongside his new team.<\/p>\n
After spending two seasons at Oklahoma, Michael Hawkins Jr. entered the transfer portal and quickly found a home in Morgantown.<\/p>\n
\u201cMike\u2019s got the capability of making so many big plays,\u201d West Virginia football head coach Rich Rodriguez said.<\/p>\n
A dual-threat quarterback, Hawkins has proved to be the perfect fit for the Mountaineers\u2019 system.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very downhill. It\u2019s fast tempo,\u201d Hawkins said. \u201cHe knows Coach Rich Rod knows what he wants, and then once you know they try to load a box, we could take shots over the top. So it\u2019s a great offense to be in.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an offense that\u2019s given him a chance to flourish. Through eight games, he\u2019s put the Big 12 on notice. Hawkins is currently second in the league in rushing yards, behind only his running back Cam Cook, and he leads the country in rushing touchdowns with 16.<\/p>\n
But what\u2019s maybe even more impressive is that he\u2019s doing all of this in his first year with the program.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, he\u2019s a freshman in our system,\u201d Rodriguez said. \u201cYou know he\u2019s going to just keep getting better and better. I\u2019m really proud for the a first-year player what he\u2019s doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Entering this season, Hawkins was 0-2 in both of his returns home to DFW. That is until this past Saturday, when West Virginia beat TCU 24-20. Hawkins got to celebrate with a lot of family and friends.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was great. This is probably a game I was looking forward to,\u201d Hawkins said. \u201cI haven\u2019t seen my family in a while, so just seeing all of them in the stands, having them come to the game was a great feeling, and being able to celebrate with them. So it was good.\u201d<\/p>\n
So a successful trip back home for the Mountaineers quarterback. And as for his new family in West Virginia: \u201cWe got to make sure he stays in Morgantown,\u201d Rodriguez said. \u201cFor the next three years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hawkins and the Mountaineers head into their bye week with a record of 5-3, and that extra week of rest could not come at a better time. On the other side, they\u2019ve got their final four regular-season games, and three of them are against ranked opponents. That all gets going next Saturday, Nov. 7, when West Virginia heads to Lubbock to take on Texas Tech.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEXAS \u2014 Frisco Emerson football alum and West Virginia quarterback Michael Hawkins Jr. made his return to Dallas-Fort…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2901,555,1570,102,162345,116,118,117,223,154,27,1569,835],"class_list":["post-481705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-app-college-sports","tag-app-sports","tag-ctv","tag-dallas","tag-donna-stark","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-texas","tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481705","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=481705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}