Texas Quarterback Has More At Stake Than Beating the Huskies

With the Longhorns' top two running backs opting out, the QB will be asked to carry the load.

SAN ANTONIO. Texas — Take one look at his long flowing brown hair and consider his football pedigree, and you almost want to call him Riggins.

Yet this is central Texas, not west; he'll lead the Texas Longhorns up against Washington in the Alamo Bowl under Thursday Night Lights, not Friday's; and Quinn Ewers is a real-life player, hardly a fictional TV character.

Still, some Longhorns followers impatiently claim this 6-foot-2, 207-pound redshirt freshman quarterback from Southlake, Texas, is a little more hype than substance — and they're giving him just one more game to prove them wrong in a high-pressure situation.

Ewers is Exhibit A of the untold pressures that name, image and likeness money have wrought. Reportedly rewarded with college football's very first $1 million-plus NIL payout after he was designated as the nation's No. 1 high school recruit, the much-discussed quarterback has been far from perfect so far when instant results were expected.

After reclassifying to skip his senior year at Carroll High School, de-committing from Texas and spending a season mostly sitting and watching Big Ten games for Ohio State, Ewers pulled a Germie Bernard — he re-pledged his services once more to his original college destination, to the Longhorns. Once Steve Sarkisian took over at UT, the quarterback quickly returned to the Lone Star state. It's home.

"When I look at the Texas Longhorns, I see a program that has a lot of pride in what they do, really passionate fans who really just want to see their university be great," Ewers said this week. "Back whenever we had Vince Young and Colt McCoy and all those great running backs, we had a lot of pride in this game, a lot of pride in this university."

Some would consider his first season in Austin, which is just 75 miles up the road from the Alamo Bowl, a reasonable success. 

The 19-year-old Ewers, who was born in San Antonio before he was raised in the all-encompassing Dallas suburbs, started nine games for Texas when he wasn't nursing a shoulder injury. He completed 141 of 249 passes for 1,808 yards and 14 touchdowns with 6 interceptions in his debut season.

However, three of those games ended up as losses to Alabama, Oklahoma State and TCU for the 8-4 Longhorns, and he's had to shoulder some of the blame. 

Quinn Ewers made the rounds of Alamo Bowl interviews.  / Dan Raley

Now isn't enormous NIL funding supposed to make you just about unstoppable or unbeatable in the eyes of the alums paying it?

In a 41-34 setback to Oklahoma State against a secondary that included UW-bound cornerback Jabbar Muhammad, Ewers was just a little off target all game. He connected on 19 of 49 passing attempts for a season-best 319 yards, but he was intercepted three times.

Considerable grumbling was registered over the QB's short-range accuracy issues and unpolished if not lazy footwork from an often unforgiving and sometimes ridiculous fan base — see Tom Herman's firing after four bowl victories in four seasons as the Longhorns coach through 2020, which included a pair of wins in the Alamo Bowl and one each in the Texas Bowl and the Sugar Bowl.

"It's hard when you're a young player and you have some instant success, you think you do have it figured out," Sarkisian said of Ewers. "There's a lot that goes into playing quarterback. By persevering through adversity, I think Quinn had to do that. Obviously, he's been experienced to a lot of the good and the bad."

With Texas' two best running backs Bijan Robinson and Roschon Johnson citing NFL draft ambitions and opting out of this Alamo Bowl, Ewers practically will be asked to beat the Huskies all by himself.

Ewers surely is the man of the moment for Texas entering Thursday night's game, and the Longhorns can only hope he'll prove to be the mighty Quinn. 

He no doubt will be asked to throw the ball more than his team usually prefers and be tasked with directing his team to a boatload of points in order to keep up with the Huskies.

Quinn Ewers and his teammates offer the Hook'em Horns gesture / Dan Raley

Yet no matter how good Ewers is against the UW under the cover of the Alamodome, it just might not be enough to guarantee him anything at all when next season rolls around.

That's because Texas just signed quarterback Arch Manning, the latest No. 1 high school football player nationwide from Newman High School in New Orleans. Of course, he's the nephew for Peyton Manning and Eli Manning, and the grandson for Archie Manning, all one-time SEC and NFL signal-callers.

Deeply involved Longhorns fans certainly have put together an extra-large NIL kitty for this young Manning — reports of the money simply spent on recruiting him were mind-numbing enough — and will consider him the immediate starter once he pulls on a burnt orange uniform.

Ewers will be out to prolong or prevent a Manning makeover for Texas, beginning with an effective outing against the Huskies.

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