Texas Tech opened the 2026 season at No. 12 in the AP poll, which sounds great until you remember it's the ceiling everyone in Lubbock has been talking about all offseason. According to Brett McMurphy, Hammond's own coach told the program flat out they'd have been a top-5 team, not No. 12, if Brendan Sorsby was the guy under center instead of Hammond. That's not exactly a vote of confidence, and Hammond apparently heard every word of it.
NEW: Will Hammond’s coach told Texas Tech they'd be ranked top 5, not No. 12, if Brendan Sorsby was QB - and Hammond's using it as fuel The mirror. The ACL. The villain role. “That’s what gets me up in the morning." Where there's Will, there's a way t.co/0A5v7BJgBj
Context matters here. Hammond tore his ACL last October against Oklahoma State, stepping in for an injured Behren Morton, and he's spent the better part of a year rehabbing his way back. Sorsby, meanwhile, was brought in as the presumed answer at QB before a gambling scandal ended his time at Texas Tech and pushed him toward the NFL supplemental draft. So the hypothetical McMurphy is describing isn't just quarterback controversy noise — it's a comparison to a guy who's no longer even on the roster, dangled in front of the guy who is.
That's a strange thing to be motivated by, and McMurphy's report leans into exactly that: the mirror, the ACL, the villain role. "That's what gets me up in the morning," Hammond reportedly said, framing the doubt as something to lift weights against rather than something that discourages him. It's the classic underdog script, except the doubt in this case is coming from inside the building, not from outside media.
For Texas Tech, the stakes are straightforward. The Red Raiders are ranked No. 12 nationally to open the year, with plenty of publications citing the uncertainty at quarterback as the reason they weren't ranked even higher. Hammond, back from a torn ACL and reportedly cleared to start Week 1, is now the guy who has to answer that doubt on the field instead of in a report.
Whether Hammond can actually push Texas Tech past No. 12 and into the conversation his coach apparently thinks Sorsby could have delivered is the entire question of the Red Raiders' season. But if McMurphy's reporting is accurate, Hammond isn't hiding from that comparison — he's using it as the reason to prove it wrong.