Throughout the offseason, head football coach Doug Martin has preserved that a starting quarterback won’t be announced until the week of New Mexico State’s opening game, but with that week zero contest against Wyoming a weeksaway, a decision is right around the corner.

The competition has largely been a two-man race between redshirt senior Nick Jeanty — who has already made 15 appearances and five starts as an Aggie — and a new face in junior college transfer from Palomar College in California, Matt Romero.

Jeanty has a clear edge when it comes to experience, spending his entire college career at NMSU getting coached up by Martin and has consistently produced in what has primarily been a backup role, throwing for 1,028 yards and six touchdowns while completing 60 percent of his passes.

The fifth-year senior did struggle with turning the ball over last season, throwing four picks to only one touchdown in his three games played, but most of those came in unfavorable situations during last ditch comeback efforts. Jeanty, for the most part, has been a somewhat conservative and safe option under center, managing games without taking excessive risk, as evidenced by a relatively low 5.47 yards per attempt average, but doing what it takes to get a win.

Romero, on the other hand, is more of a gunslinger, well suited to NMSU’s air-raid offense that was top-two in the nation in pass attempts last season (with 49.2), and despite this being his first year dawning the crimson and white, the junior from Oceanside, Cal. feels completely comfortable in Martin’s system.

“It’s actually, like, the same exact offense,” Romero said with a big smile on his face. “It was all new terminology, but it’s the same plays so it hasn’t been too hard to pick up on.”

In this type of offense, Romero has put up some quality numbers, throwing for 5489 yards and 49 touchdowns in 23 starts for Palomar over the last two years.

Still, the importance of gaining familiarity with an offense that returns eight of 11 starters cannot be understated, and it’s yet to be determined whether or not Romero has built up enough chemistry to claim the starting job unimpeded.

Luckily for Martin and the team, it doesn’t look like any bad blood has been drawn throughout the quarterback competition, with Romero and Jeanty being able to work off of each other and while maintaining a good relationship.

“He’s a great guy. He’s been here for, what, four or five years now? So I had a lot of questions because I didn’t know the plays and he’s always there to help me out,” Romero said when asked about his experience working with and competing with Jeanty. “It can get tough at times, but that’s what competition is.”

While the likely starter will come from the duo of Jeanty and Romero, redshirt freshman Josh Adkins, who could have the highest ceiling of the bunch, is staking his claim for the spot with a strong fall camp, earning reps with the first team offense in a time where every rep counts. If the position battle is close, expect the young guy to get the call.

Martin has gone so far as to say that multiple quarterbacks could play if needed, but has maintained that he is comfortable with the situation and will have complete faith in whoever does end up with the job.

“When something has happened, Nick has stepped in and he’s won football games for us, so he’s got experience on his side… [Romero] makes a lot of plays, he makes things happen, he can extend plays and obviously has a very strong arm, so we like those things about him… and Josh Adkins is a guy redshirted last year that I really like — really intelligent, very accurate throwing the ball and a little bit more athletic than most people give him credit for,” Martin said of the QB candidates. “We’ve got the perfect storm if you are going to replace a quarterback. You’d like to have somebody with experience, you’d like to probably have a new guy in there in Romero and you’d like to have a young guy coming.”

We still have to wait another week to see what materializes from this “perfect storm” (which only means football is that much closer), but if there’s one thing we do know, it’s that this decision will determine whether 2017 was a one-season wonder story or NMSU’s winning ways are here to stay.