Matt Rhule knew he had to get his promising freshman passer more time on the field with his graduate transfer quarterback sidelined with a head injury and his big-armed sophomore struggling. The Bears trailed West Virginia 38-13 late in the third quarter, and Rhule handed the reins to Charlie Brewer.

He didn’t anticipate that Brewer would never give them back.

He also didn’t expect him to turn garbage time into crunch time. “Meaningless” snaps turned into a rally that might have ignited the next three years of Baylor football.

The Bears ultimately lost the game, 38-36, but found their quarterback of the future.

“Whether he’s doing the right thing or the wrong thing, he’s going to do it with 100 percent confidence,” running back JaMycal Hasty said. “Charlie has a grit to him. Even when he didn’t really know things that well, he still did everything with confidence, like he’d been out there for years. Just that, and he’s got a mental toughness about him that you don’t really see in too many young quarterbacks.”

Everyone saw exactly that when he showed up on campus last spring. The freshman mistakes were there, but his outlandish potential was just as present. Anu Solomon’s injury trashed Rhule’s plan to redshirt him, but when the rushed timeline meant shoving him into action, he showed he was ready.

“He kind of has a way about him. He’s a fighter. He just does quarterback things,” Rhule said. “When he got in there, the moment was never too big for him. Lots of guys can throw it, lots of guys look great, but Charlie puts it all together and is hard to stop as a result. He did it with his arm, he did it with his feet and with his head. To me, that’s the magic potion. If you have a guy who can do those three things, with his intelligence, his arm and his feet, you’ve got something.”

As Rhule sets out to rebuild the Bears’ program, quarterback is a good place to start. And the second half of 2017 showed they indeed have something at the most important position on the field.