Colt McCoy To Jordan Shipley: The Past, Present and Future of Texas Football

There have been many great passing combinations in college football throughout its history.  Most recently there have been some great pairs including Graham Harrell and Michael Crabtree, Brady Quinn and Jeff Smardja, and you can’t go on without adding Colt McCoy and Jordan Shipley to this list. 

Shipley and McCoy were two of the most productive players in college football the last few years, and this kind of combination is traditionally rare in college football much less at Texas.

Will we ever see a combination like this again at the University of Texas?  The answer is yes and as long as the current coaching staff is in place they should be able to generate another duo similar to McCoy and Shipley.  Perhaps the biggest question though is how long will it take to see another combination like McCoy and Shipley at Texas.  Perhaps not as long as many think.

The current coaching staff knows how to bring in talent at both the quarterback and the wide receiver position so there is a possibility that there could be another McCoy/Shipley combination coming to Texas soon.  The McCoy/Shipley combination was built out of trust and friendship along with reliability but like other relationships in football have been built (see Peyton Manning and Marvin Harrison) reliability seems to always be the bigger factor. 

Quarterbacks love a guy that will catch all of the passes that he throws (to that player) and he likes someone who is on the same page as he is.

Is there another McCoy/Shipley in the mix for Texas?  Of course there will be, but who knows if it will come next year or 10 years down the road.  These kinds of combinations don’t come along all that often but you can be sure that the coaching staff will try to develop another one to help get that same kind of production back from when they had the McCoy/Shipley combination. 

McCoy and Shipley were two of the better college football players to play the game.  They helped the Longhorns win many games while they were at Texas (42) and helped lead them close to winning a National Title.  Without that kind of combination it can be stated that the Longhorns may not have done as well as they did.  The McCoy to Shipley connection will certainly be missed until a new relationship with a new quarterback and a new wide receiver can be forged.

Both McCoy and Shipley are legends at the University of Texas and if another pair similar to the two comes along and they have similar success then they will suffer from the comparisons that many fans, media members, and even coaches will give them (in comparing them to McCoy and Shipley).  While it may be an honor for some to be compared to McCoy and Shipley, anyone who comes close to what they have done will surely want to make a name for themselves. 

So as we bid farewell to Colt McCoy and Jordan Shipley, Longhorns fans will be hoping that it won’t be too long before we see another star combination like those two back at Texas.  Hopefully, in the near future, we will see another combination like McCoy and Shipley and hopefully they will be as or more productive than the fantastic duo that we have seen for the last four years at Texas?  Time will tell.