The Hair Apparent: How Kaden Anderson became Tarleton State’s next great quarterback

BY GAVIN PATRICK

Co-Managing Editor/Sports Editor

Kaden Anderson sat behind the table for postgame just after midnight on Aug. 29, fresh off leading Tarleton State to a 49-30 Week 0 win over Prairie View A&M.

He had an easy look on his face: confident, but pleasant, his smile reassuring the moment he earned to be able to sit in that chair. “At peace” may be the best way to describe it.

His pristine passing and four touchdowns from earlier that night could have been the reason for this demeanor. Anderson was the star of the game, by all means, proving right away why he is the right guy to succeed Victor Gabalis, the stache and all. But the reason was simpler: He was having fun again playing the game he loved.

“I think it just comes with confidence,” Anderson said.

Someone doesn’t just enter the transfer portal for no reason. And judging by his final decision, he wasn’t chasing money.

Anderson spent three years at the University of Wyoming as a middling starter. He could never build on his success from high school, which amounted to a 27-2 record at powerhouse Southlake Carroll and being recruited as a three-star prospect.

Anderson could have chosen to stick it out at Wyoming, with two years of eligibility left. Besides, finally succeeding at an FBS program could have given him a better chance to make it at the next level. But he opted for a reset, like so many others do today.

“All of these guys believe in me, and I believe in them,” Anderson said of his teammates at Tarleton State. “When we're playing loose and having fun, it's such a different game. And when you got dudes around you that support you, it's really a special place, and I'm so glad that I found Tarleton.”

Anderson never threw his old Wyoming coaches or teammates under the bus or blamed them for his failures. He’s not that type. Even when he’s not having fun, he keeps a level head. At Tarleton State, he fits the mold.

“There's the goods and the bads of the portal, but the good can be you get to hit a restart button and you get a fresh start with a new group of coaches and a new team and a new culture,” Chris Ross, Tarleton’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, said.

“This is a program that's very similar to where he played high school, where you're gonna come in and expectations are high and you get to compete for a championship, and he hadn't really had that opportunity [in college].”

One of the reasons Anderson felt convicted about Tarleton State was the quick rapport he found with Ross, who is also in his first year at Tarleton.

“I just hit it off with Coach Ross. Coach Ross is a huge reason why I came here, and then I just fell in love with this school,” Anderson said. “This place is a little hidden gem, as I call it.

“One of my o-linemen from high school goes here (Jake Hall), so he reached out to me and asked if I was interested, and I said, ‘Heck yeah, man.’ I came on a visit and just instantly I fell in love and I knew this was the place where I wanted to be.”

Anderson was almost glowing in the post-practice sun as he said this. “We had a perfect day today,” he said. He went on about the day before: “perfect” as well.

Pads were off, the defense was letting the offense work in team drills, but the ball never hit the ground, outside of one dropped pass. Those kinds of days are routine at Tarleton State. Makes sense when they rarely lose football games.

For Anderson to level out at a struggling FBS program to then have an opportunity to start at quarterback for the number one offense in the FCS, it seemed like a no-brainer.

The structure of Tarleton’s offense appeals to him, too. Wyoming’s offense was more run-heavy, he said, whereas at Tarleton there’s more downfield shots and run-pass options, which he loves. He also loves the spread style and not having to go under center.

“It kind of feels like my high school offense a little bit,” Anderson said. “It's something I'm comfortable with. The offense is really easy when you got dudes around you that can go make plays for you. It makes my job a lot easier.”

But despite the comfort right away, Anderson was locked into a quarterback battle all summer with Braedyn Locke. Locke has all the necessary tools to be the starter and garnered more hype than Anderson following the announcement of Tarleton’s spring transfers in February.  

The team didn’t officially name a starter until the week of the first game. In fact, in a room where four of the five quarterbacks started and won games elsewhere in 2025, the Texans’ third-stringer, Jackson Gilkey, beat Tarleton’s Sept. 12 opponent, McNeese, starting at Weber State last season and ran for 114 yards.

Ross indicated that there isn’t a serious drop-off from one quarterback to the next and said he’d feel confident winning a game with “basically any” quarterback in the room.

“I mean, these guys are excellent,” Ross said. “There's a reason they're at Tarleton. All five of them have unique strengths and bring different things to the team. ... It really comes down to who fits this group and gives this team the best opportunity at this moment to go win, and right now that's Kaden.”

In all fairness, reality implies that the decision came down to a little more than what Ross’s classic coach speak suggests. One quality of Anderson that Ross raved about is his “knack for creating explosive plays.”

“He has a unique understanding of where everybody is on the field, and he's mobile enough to buy time, but he's intelligent enough to understand where everybody is, and then he has great arm strength and accuracy as everybody has seen,” Ross said.

Another quarterback on the roster with great accuracy? Locke. “Braedyn Locke has six passes, he's 5-of-6,” Ross said. Two quarterbacks with combative skill sets can create a rift, but in this quarterback room, it’s quite the opposite.

Ross said the thing he respects the most about his QBs is how they “absolutely love and root on each other.”

“I think Braedyn’s a hell of a player,” Anderson said. “We both can do some really special things. ... It's really special to be at a place where all the quarterbacks get along. I know if Braedyn goes out there, I support him, and I know when I'm out there he supports me as well.”

Ross has been incredibly supportive of Anderson as well. Anderson said that Ross gives him control of the offense, such as allowing him to check in and out of plays at the line of scrimmage rather than Ross dictating the script from the sideline.

He said that kind of autonomy helps him play loose and that “all credit goes to Coach Ross.”

“It's a one-two punch with me and Coach Ross out there,” Anderson said, “‘cause we kind of bounce off each other's feedback.

“Obviously, I have another year here; I don't want to leave, so me and Coach Ross are really gonna do something special here.”

Safe to say Anderson has found a home in Stephenville. He’s never been what media people would call “a household name,” but even in a crowded quarterback room, the former FBS-castoff has proved that this is his job for the foreseeable future.

“Yeah,” Ross said, “he's our starter. He's doing a phenomenal job.”