Brownsville QB suddenly a hot target
Some times when you play in Brownsville, Texas, you’ll get overlooked by many of the nation’s top college programs. But when you have a golden arm like Billy Garza of Brownsville (Texas) Porter the college coaches are going to find you.
One of the teams that found Garza, a 6-foot-2, 210-pound dual-threat quarterback, is Illinois. Garza took an official visit to Illinois this past weekend and came away very impressed, according to his coach Jim Helms.
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“He had a really good time,” Helms said.
“I got a chance to talk to him this morning when he got back and he was excited about what he was seeing on the trip and he liked everything that coach Turner was telling him about how he’d fit in there.”
So who is this kid?
Where did he come from?
“He was probably not on too many people’s list because of the offense that he was running before we got here,” Helms said.
“We ended up changing things around quite a bit and make him the focal point of our offense.”
And the change paid off.
In the regular season, Garza completed 166 passes on 303 attempts for 2,509 yards and 30 touchdowns. Helms said Garza finished his high school career with more than 3,500 yards and with 36 touchdowns in his career.
“I coached college football for 35 years,” Helms, who was an assistant coach most recently at Illinois and also had stops at Texas, Oklahoma and Mississippi State, said.
“I know that I would have recruited him when I was there. He can throw the football and he’s very intelligent. He can also take off and run with it. He's not going to just sit there in the pocket and get sacked. Somebody is going to get a great one here.”
Helms said that just recently that Texas A&M, Wisconsin, Missouri and Ole Miss have stepped up the recruiting pressure, along with Illinois. The Illini are the only team at this point that has offered a scholarship.