Scotty Young was one of the nation's most prolific high school passers, was a consensus national top-10 quarterback in the 2010 recruiting class and signed with a school known for its prolific passing attack.
Chances are, though, you've never heard of him, and there's good reason for that: He hasn't taken a snap in a college game.
Young's last snap came in 2009 in a playoff game as a high school senior at Denton (Texas) Ryan. Young threw for 4,467 yards and 64 TDs that season; that came on the heels of a junior season in which he threw for 4,495 yards and 65 TDs. That's 8,962 yards and 129 TDs in two seasons as a high school starter.
Young (6-feet-2, 210 pounds) signed with Texas Tech out of high school, then redshirted the 2010 season (he actually chose Texas Tech when Mike Leach was coach, then stuck with the Red Raiders even after Leach was fired). Young didn't play a down in 2011 and decided to transfer to Louisiana Tech, which ran a pass-happy offense similar to Texas Tech's. He sat out again in 2012 under NCAA transfer rules, then saw offense-minded coach Sonny Dykes leave for California.
Tech's new coach is Skip Holtz, who always has preferred a run-heavy offense. Then again, as his offensive coordinator, Holtz hired Tony Petersen away from Marshall; the Thundering Herd threw the ball 607 times last season, second-highest in the nation. But like Young, the rest of the offense is inexperienced, with just two starters returning from a 9-3 team.
"The thing that is an advantage is you have a guy like Scotty who has zero experience in the college game, but ... he's been around the college game," Holtz told the Shreveport (La.) Times. "He has a lot of scrimmage reps. The way we have tried to offset some of our inexperience is we have gotten an awful lot of scrimmage reps this fall camp."
Young is considered a cerebral quarterback with a good-but-not-great arm.
Louisiana Tech opens Saturday at North Carolina State, another school with a new coach (Dave Doeren). The Wolfpack have just four returning starters on defense, including just one in the secondary (senior cornerback Dontae Johnson).
"I have matured a lot since I started in college," Young told the Monroe (La.) News-Star. "I think that is probably the biggest thing I have learned through being in the programs, that there are going to be ups and downs no matter where you are. If you can just stay calm with everything and be confident in yourself, everything will work itself out."
Mike Huguenin can be reached at mike.huguenin@nfl.com. You also can follow him on Twitter @MikeHuguenin.
