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Down a pair of impactful players to season-ending injuries, No. 13 Texas Tech enters the home stretch near the top of the Big 12 standings on uneasy footing within its quarterback room inside the College Football Playoff race.

Redshirt freshman quarterback Will Hammond, who has filled in with precise execution this season for injured starter Behren Morton, suffered a torn ACL in his right knee during Saturday's win over Oklahoma State, according to ESPN, and will miss the rest of the campaign.

Texas Tech (7-1, 4-1) already lost defensive tackle Skyler Gill-Howard to ankle surgery earlier this month and moves forward into a season-defining November stretch with uncertainty at the most important position on offense, too.

Hammond's non-contact injury in the first half forced Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire to go with third-team option Mitch Griffis, a senior transfer from Wake Forest, for the remainder of contest. He finished with 172 yards two total touchdowns, helping the Red Raiders grab their first shutout win over a Big 12 opponent since 2005.

That was the first game action since 2023 for Griffis, who joined this offseason as an emergency No. 3 behind Morton and Hammond in Lubbock.

McGuire confirmed to CBS Sports on Monday that Morton will return to the starting lineup and is "ready to go" for Saturday's game at Kansas State after missing Texas Tech's last two games with a lower-body ailment.

Unbeaten across six starts this season, Morton is completing 68.4% of his passes for 1,501 yards and 13 touchdowns with three interceptions. Banged up since early September, Morton has only been sacked six times, but has taken a number of hits from the pocket.

"We felt good about Will and Mitch," McGuire said after the win over Oklahoma State. "We wanted to get (Morton) as healthy as we can. If something crazy would have happened with Mitch and it was a competitive game, then he would have been able to go in."

The Red Raiders host unbeaten and 10th-ranked BYU on Nov. 8, then UCF the following week. Texas Tech gets an open date prior to its regular-season finale at West Virginia.

Winning out puts Texas Tech in the Big 12 Championship Game, but another loss likely ends that hope for a program that went all-in this spring in the transfer portal after signing one of the nation's top-rated hauls.

Kansas State, one of the league's preseason favorites, has turned around a disappointing 2-4 start with consecutive wins to pull within two games of conference-leading BYU and Cincinnati in the Big 12 standings.

Wildcats quarterback Avery Johnson had seven total touchdowns without a turnover during wins over TCU and Kansas this month and will be a test for Texas Tech's top-rated defense.