At the midway point of the season, Mike Hawkins Jr.’s passing numbers still invite the wrong kind of quick judgment.
WVU’s quarterback does not jump off the page in completion percentage, but that alone does not come close to telling the full story. The way the offense is built has a lot to do with why the stat sheet looks the way it does.
WVU has leaned hard into the deep ball, and Hawkins is operating in an attack that asks him to push it downfield more often than almost anyone else in the country. Only two quarterbacks have thrown more passes 20 or more yards beyond the line of scrimmage this season: Braden Atkinson of Oregon State and Kalieb Osborne of UConn.
But the usage profile is very different across the three. Atkinson plays in a pass-heavy offense, so just 19% of his throws travel 20-plus yards.
Osborne sits at 24.5%. Hawkins, meanwhile, leads the nation at 34.2%.
The next-closest full-time Power Four starter is Isaiah Marshall at 24.8%.
That kind of approach naturally drags down completion percentage. Hawkins is completing 39.5% of those deep throws, but that number is right in line with quarterbacks who have taken roughly the same number of chances - most of them live in the high 30s or low 40s.
The intermediate game tells a different story. On throws of 10-19 yards, Hawkins is completing 54.5% of his passes.
It’s an area he can sharpen, sure, but it also represents the smallest share of his attempts at 19.8%. In raw terms, 12-of-22 is hardly a disaster.
That mark also stacks up well against a long list of recognizable quarterbacks, including Nico Iamaleava of UCLA, Lincoln Keinholz of Louisville, Bear Bachmeier of BYU, Kenny Minchey of Kentucky, CJ Bailey of NC State, Anthony Colandrea of Virginia, Avery Johnson of Kansas State, Beau Pribula of Virginia, Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele of Cal, Aaron Philo of Florida, and Faizon Brandon of Tennessee.
Where Hawkins has been especially efficient is on throws behind the line of scrimmage to the sticks. He has completed 31 of 42 passes there for 242 yards and has not had a single turnover-worthy play on those snaps.
That’s part of why the offense feels like it could use a little more variety. A heavier dose of quick-game concepts - RPOs, screens, bubbles, slants, and similar plays - would not only help open things up, it would also give Hawkins a chance to settle in sooner instead of waiting around for deep shots on third down when the defense is already braced for them. The idea is simple: sometimes a quarterback needs to see one or two easy ones go through before everything else starts to click.
Drops and throwaways also matter here. Hawkins is not the kind of quarterback who will force the ball into a tight window just to avoid giving up on a play. If nothing is there and he can’t escape with his legs, he’s going to throw it away and move on.
A little more balance in the pass-game menu would make his numbers look better. Some of the routes simply take time to develop, and some of that appears to be by design, with the goal of clearing bodies out of the way and creating more room for Hawkins to run.
He has missed a few throws he would like back. Nobody is pretending otherwise.
But the idea that he simply cannot throw the football doesn’t hold up. The deeper explanation is rhythm, structure, and the kind of plays WVU is asking him to run.
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