North Texas trailed Southern Miss 21-14 with 45 seconds remaining in the first half in Week 5. Following a loss on first down and false start, they faced a 2nd-and-16 from their own 14-yard-line. Instead of packing it in, Mean Green head coach Seth Littrell showed trust in his sophomore quarterback.
Mason Fine faked the handoff to running back Jeffery Wilson, took a five-step drop and launched deep to Caleb Chumley for a 43-yard gain that set up a last-second field goal.
Yep, Fine's shoulder is just . . . fine.
Fine was the lone quarterback signee in Littrell's first class in Denton. The 5-foot-11, 180-pound two-star recruit from Oklahoma committed to the program during a visit in January 2016, seven weeks after Littrell, also a native Oklahoman, was hired.
“After Seth saw the film, he said, ‘I’ve got to have this guy," recalled Matt Hennesy, Fine's coach at Locust Grove High School. “I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and Mason is the best high school quarterback I’ve seen.”
Fine appeared in 10 games (nine starts) as a true freshman, throwing for 1,572 yards and six touchdowns while winning four games — quadrupling North Texas' total from 2015 — before going down with a season-ending injury to his throwing shoulder against Western Kentucky on Nov. 12.
It was a long and painful offseason for Fine, one absent of a guarantee he'd be the No. 1 quarterback in 2017. At the end of training camp, Littrell announced Fine as starter but admitted uncertainty if the sophomore would win the job.
"I feel a lot more confident in myself and the offense," Fine said after being announced as their Week 1 starter. "The game is slowing down for me. Hopefully that will translate."
It has translated.
His patient, pinpoint connection with Chumley in the eventual 43-28 win over Southern Miss accounted for 43 of his 684 yards on deep passes this season (passes targeted 20 or more yards downfield), according to Pro Football Focus. Fine and West Virginia's Will Grier (789) are the only two quarterbacks with more than 650 deep-pass yards.
The performance (24-for-40 for 366 yards and two touchdowns) boosted his yards-per-attempt average to 8.8, an increase of 2.8 yards from a year ago that hasn't hurt his completion clip (59.4 percent to 62.6 percent).
Fine's touchdown-to-interception ratio has also improved from 1.2-to-1 to 2.75-to-1, and he's done a better job of bouncing back from empty drives. For example, after five of their first six possessions against Southern Miss resulted in three punts in two turnovers, he led scoring drives on their next seven possessions to craft an insurmountable 15-point lead.
North Texas is 3-2 for the first time since their return to the FBS in 1995. And if Mason Fine keeps terrorizing secondaries with the deep ball, the sophomore quarterback and Mean Green may keep rewriting the history books.
