Walker Howard will earn his first career start Saturday at Cajun Field, about 6 miles from where he starred for perennial power St. Thomas More.
But the seemingly short trip across town has actually been more of a full-circle journey for the new Louisiana (Lafayette) quarterback, who spent one season at LSU and two at Ole Miss before transferring back to the hometown program.
“I feel like I’ve lived nine lives,” Howard told Louisiana vs. All Y’all during Manning Passing Academy in June. “I feel like I’ve gone through the highs, I’ve gone through the lows, and being back home, it’s definitely got me back to my roots and what I used to do when I was younger, like my everyday when I was back in high school and what my ‘why’ was, and it’s great to be back in that environment.”
Coach Michael Desormeaux announced the decision last week — 10 days ahead of the Ragin’ Cajuns’ season opener against Rice.
The fourth-year head coach, himself a former quarterback for the program, has tended toward patience in declaring a starting quarterback in position battles in recent years.
But Desormeaux said Howard’s performance from the time he joined the program this past winter warranted the move and that the hope was that the additional time before the first game would allow Howard to settle through his excitement and emotions and into the role.
“Walker has consistently performed at a really high level,” the coach said. “There were days where maybe someone through it a little bit better than the other and days where someone maybe graded a little bit higher or whatever the case may be, but the full body of work from spring all the way through fall camp, it was time to go do it. You know, you needed to name the starter for him to finally take a deep breath and say, ‘Alright, now it’s time to go do it.’ And I think for him, he’s handled it really well. Obviously he was really excited about it. He went out there and he performed really well in the scrimmage. Whenever we want out there and scrimmaged, he took all the reps with the 1’s, which was the first time he’d done that. And since then, it’s just been business as usual.
“Like I told him, now it’s just about going and doing your job and playing quarterback. You don’t have to — the thing you always worry about, and I said this whenever Ben (Wooldridge) came back from injury and all those things is ‘Just go do your job. You don’t have to do anything more or less than what you do every day. We have good people around him. We’ve got really good players that are gonna support him and play well for him around him. He just needs to go do his job, no more, no less, and have fun doing it. And that’s what we’ve been harping on with him.”
Howard beat out another pair of former Louisiana state championship quarterbacks for the job in redshirt freshman Daniel Beale from Catholic (Baton Rouge) and redshirt sophomore D’Wanye “Lunch” Winfield from Lutcher.
Desmoreaux said the strong performances overall by both those players made the announcement somewhat bittersweet because of his confidence in all three players.
“I absolutely think that was the best time for it,” the coach said. “You know, I told those guys, selfishly I didn’t really want to make a decision at all, because as excited as you are for Walker, it’s tough for the other two because I think a lot of ’em. It’s really easy if you can look at ’em and say, ‘Look, you’re just not ready yet.’ And, you know, that’s not really the case. All three of those guys I think could win, and I think they give us a chance to win. It was time to do it, though. It was time.”