Texas A&M Football: 2 surprising scenarios for Haynes King’s return

Haynes King could return as the starter of the Texas A&M football team and eventually be benched in favor of Zach Calzada

You can talk yourself into believing that Zach Calzada will retain the quarterback spot all you want — there is one simple truth in the way of this.

Haynes King won the quarterback battle in the offseason.

Heck, King won the battle for the backup quarterback spot behind Kellen Mond a year ago over Calzada, who was the backup the year prior. There’s no way to prance around it — King beat out Calzada in two consecutive seasons. There was definitely a “quarterback competition” this offseason, but it looks like Calzada was trailing distantly behind.

Because of this, it’s hard to see a world where Jimbo Fisher doesn’t turn back to King upon his return. I’ll cover other hypotheticals in the coming weeks, but King taking back the reigns from Calzada is almost inevitable.

That said, if there was that big of a gap between King and Calzada, Calzada would have transferred away. It’s not uncommon for this to happen — we’ve seen guys transfer out after losing a quarterback battle and eventually win the Heisman award. Just look at Joe Burrow, who went from Ohio State to LSU.

The purpose of this article, however, is not to compare Zach Calzada to Joe Burrow, it’s much simpler. Calzada has found his way into a groove as the Aggies’ starter — if King returns and has another shaky performance, there’s no reason why Jimbo Fisher won’t have him sit and redshirt the remainder of the year (if he returns in 2021) while Calzada starts.

I’m not saying this is definitely going to happen, but it’s a definite possibility.