Tom Savage Isn't Typical First-Time Starter for Playoff Hopeful Houston Texans

Tom Savage will stare down a long list of daunting questions Saturday night. Then he'll either be engulfed by them or put out fires one at a time.

He's the Houston Texans' starting quarterback now after the Brock Osweiler experiment mercifully reached its messy conclusion. There's no brighter stage to make your first career start nearly three full seasons after being a mid-round pick (135th overall in 2014).

Savage will be responsible for keeping the Texans' playoff hopes afloat as they enter Week 16 still leading the AFC South, but only because of a tiebreaker with the Tennessee Titans. Both teams have 8-6 records, and the Indianapolis Colts are just one game back.

He'll be playing under the searing prime-time lights against the Cincinnati Bengals, a team that's struggled all season but still employs a defensive tackle who can gobble up quarterbacks. Geno Atkins is tied for the league lead among all interior defensive linemen with eight sacks, according to Pro Football Focus, and is second with 65 pressures.

And he'll be doing it all on Christmas Eve, a time when family and football blend seamlessly to put more scrutinizing eyes on a quarterback who's attempted just 55 career regular-season passes.

Savage likely won't be functioning at warp speed, though, because that's not his style. It's not how football has shaped him. You can't take the long, winding road of his career at high speeds.

His performance Saturday night will be a product of that journey and the hurdles jumped by a 26-year-old who didn't find his college football home until the third try. Now, after suffering two injuries and then being pushed aside by the Texans' free-agency splash at his position, it's finally Savage's turn.

He's a bargain compared to Brock Osweiler, as ESPN Stats & Information noted. But the size of his paycheck has little bearing on what really matters: stepping into a game that doubles as a rattling washing machine and having the maturity beyond his years to handle the weight of the moment.

To understand Savage and why he's more experienced than his game logs let on, we have to travel back in time, briefly stopping at three schools.

Our first stop is 2009, when Savage was a freshman starter at Rutgers. He was reliably solid and showed quality vision with just seven interceptions all season alongside 14 touchdown throws. Savage was also named a freshman All-American, and his future looked bright.

Then that flame flickered and faded. Savage suffered a hand injury early in 2010 that eventually cost him his starting job at Rutgers. He went from a highly touted recruit to being a castoff and needing to sit out a season after transferring to Arizona.

A year of critical development time without game action went by, and Savage still couldn't find permanent footing. He transferred once more after Arizona hired Rich Rodriguez as its new head coach. Yet again he had to sit for a season, and yet again his draft stock and future took a roundhouse kick to the gut.

That's when he arrived at the University of Pittsburgh and came under the watch of then-quarterbacks coach Brooks Bollinger. Immediately it was clear to Bollinger that, despite the mental beatings Savage had taken while going from prized recruit to repeatedly discarded, he had the physical tools to be an NFL quarterback.

"He had an NFL arm and could make any throw on the field," Bollinger told Bleacher Report. "He's a big guy but has enough athletic ability to be considered athletic for his size. He has good feet and can be elusive enough for that to be a strength in the pocket. He has a quick release too."

His filled physical toolbox hasn't gone anywhere even after almost zero meaningful NFL snaps prior to a Week 15 relief appearance against the Jacksonville Jaguars. The 6'4", 230-pound passer leaned on his powerful arm plenty when he entered midway through the second quarter. A 13-0 deficit with the Texans' playoff hopes perilously dangling turned into a 21-20 win over Jacksonville. Savage completed 63.9 percent of his pass attempts for 260 yards at an average of 7.2 yards per throw.

In a sense there were two victories on the day: the critical one on the scoreboard and that the Texans' best offensive player regained relevance.

Wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins has a rare combination of speed and spider-like hands to reel in balls that descend from all angles as he contorts his body. Yet he was an afterthought with Osweiler under center.

Week(s)	Catches	Yards
Week 15	8	87
Weeks 1-14 (avg)	4.6	53.9

In addition to reviving Hopkins, Savage has demonstrated an ability to be careful while processing the speed of NFL defenses. He didn't throw an interception against the Jaguars and also went interception-free throughout the preseason on 65 attempts.

That care is a product of Savage's more important set of tools as he enters a pressure cooker Saturday night. Those tools are hidden and not easy to quantify. But they're always present after he learned three different offenses in college before setting foot in an NFL facility and had success with two different sets of receivers at Rutgers and Pittsburgh.

He's mentally hardened and able to adapt, which may be his greatest skill as a career-defining moment arrives.

"I think there's an internal confidence after being battle-tested," Bollinger said. "He's failed and succeeded on big stages before, and in very public ways. When you transfer twice and go through what he went through, it'll do one of two things: It'll either make you crumble or make you stronger.

"I think it's made him stronger and given him a greater ability to handle some of the stresses of the position more so than a lot of guys who are young in their careers."

There's nothing normal about Savage.

He didn't take a standard path to the NFL. Once he arrived, the Pennsylvania native lost another year of crucial grooming time after landing on injured reserve due to a shoulder issue in 2015.

Now when clearly evident physical traits—which led Bleacher Report's Chris Simms to call Savage a "better pure thrower" than Osweiler—are combined with mental maturity beyond his 26 years, the seeds for something rare could be planted.

The Texans might surge after a mid-December change at football's most pivotal position and shake up the AFC playoff picture. How? Through a top-ranked defense, a running back in Lamar Miller who has recorded four 100-plus-yard rushing games and the arrival of quarterback competence.

All that is encouraging and gives Texans fans hope that they'll trade sugar plums dancing in their heads when they hit the hay on Christmas Eve for thoughts of a home playoff game. But there's a catch, because there's always a catch.

Although his long football journey will help because of the mental toughness he's acquired, nothing can ever simulate what Savage is stepping into Saturday.

There will be no dipping a toe into NFL starting quarterback waters. He'll cannonball right into raging rapids.

Savage hasn't started a regular-season game at any level since 2013, when Bollinger—who said the speed adjustment from college to the NFL is "like going from flying a prop plane to a fighter jet"—was working with him.

Bollinger knows the feeling of being pushed into a difficult situation. He dealt with that during his career when, like Savage, he was a backup for most of his time in the NFL. Bollinger made 10 starts over five seasons, nine of which came with the New York Jets in 2005.

The advice he had for his former student amounts to the time-tested "KISS" principle. And above all, trust yourself.

"You have to keep it as simple as you can," Bollinger said. "You have to continually simplify your thought process. And then the biggest and most difficult thing is trusting your preparation."

There's another person connected to Savage's last season as a starter who may have even more knowledge of the quarterback's mental makeup. That person will be on the other sideline Saturday night.

Justin K. Aller/Getty Images

"When I played with him he always handled pressure well," said Tyler Boyd, who was Savage's primary receiver in 2013 and led Pitt with 1,174 receiving yards. "And now coming into the league he should be able to manage it. He has a couple years under his belt with time to mature and develop in all the areas he needed to improve."

Boyd, the Bengals' second-round pick in 2016, said he connected with Savage immediately.

"He believed in me, and I believed in him," Boyd said. "It was like we had been playing with each other for years."

There's precedent then at several stops for a situation where Savage slides in and the link between quarterback and receiver is seamless. That happened at Rutgers and again between Boyd and Savage in Pittsburgh.

Now the Texans are hoping for another instant click. Like Boyd, they believe he's ready after several years of seasoning in the same system while surrounded by familiar faces.

"To be honest, I felt that he had the opportunity and knew he would get drafted, but I didn't think he was quite ready to be a starting quarterback his first or second year," Boyd added. "So that's why it's good that he's had time to mature, develop, pick up on game speed and build chemistry with his guys. So now I feel that he's more than ready. And I doubt he's feeling much pressure."

Time and experience. Savage has collected the latter in abundance as the former kept ticking and his career detoured around different obstacles.

Now he's stopped at another destination and another milestone. He'll arrive there Saturday as a quarterback who doesn't look or think like your typical first-time starter.

The Texans hope that will keep him from being swallowed whole by the moment. And Savage hopes this next opportunity isn't fleeting once again.