Golden: Texas' Quinn Ewers did what he had to do, but he's far from a finished product
Quinn Ewers wasn’t a world beater Saturday.
And he didn’t have to be.
At least not in the season opener.
The Texas quarterback was plenty good enough against scrappy but outclassed Rice, but he will take a major step up in competition when the Horns visit Alabama in Week 2.
Ewers did his job and got his team out of Royal-Memorial Stadium in relatively healthy fashion for the upcoming showdown in Tuscaloosa while Texas' defense did most of heavy lifting. To a man, everyone in the UT camp understands that this offense and its quarterback will have to be miles better in their next game to avenge what should have been an upset in Austin this time last season.
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Saturday’s 37-10 win wasn’t without some early struggles — Texas whiffed on its first six third-down tries, and I’m still not sure why Steve Sarkisian went for it on fourth-and-2 from his own 33-yard line on the opening drive — but the Longhorns' rugged defense picked up the slack.
The Horns found a balance and put the Owls away with three third-quarter touchdowns, giving an indication of what this offense can be. That said, consistency will have to show up for this group to conquer bigger game.
As for Ewers, he described the offense’s start as shaky, but in the second half it looked more like the unit many expected to put up 40-plus points. He was comfortable behind an offensive line that provided decent protection but admittedly left some makeable throws on the field.
“We were able to settle in and kind of reset back in the locker room and just kind of catch our breath,” Ewers said. “I think we were doing a lot of things wrong mentally. We just had self-inflicted wounds that we fixed in the locker room. I’m super proud of how we came out in the second half.”
Ewers was decent but not spectacular. On the same day Colorado's Shedeur Sanders riddled national runner-up TCU’s defense for 510 passing yards and four touchdowns in a 45-42 thriller up in Cowtown, his fellow class of 2021 recruit completed 19 of 30 attempts for 260 yards and three touchdowns in three quarters at DKR before giving way to Maalik Murphy.
Noticeably more mobile after dropping 20 pounds in the offseason, Ewers added a 16-yard scramble and a goal-line score on a nifty zone read.
After a freshman year that didn’t meet his own lofty standards, Ewers rededicated himself to his craft, divorced Chick-fil-A and started a romance with the weight room. What we see before us is a lean, clean-cut, 195-pound version who's also carrying himself like someone willing to put in the work to meet next spring’s NFL first-round draft projections.
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Growing pains have turned to growing gains
Sarkisian believes Ewers has taken a large step in maturity. A large part of the game is mental, and Ewers is growing in that department.
“I think I learned a lot last year through the adversity we went through and how to regain focus and get guys back focused,” Ewers said. “Whether guys are on the sideline wondering what’s gone wrong, you kind of put them back on path, and even with myself, I have to do the same thing. I’ve learned a lot from it.”
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If you’re looking for one nit, the Horns still haven’t gotten that long ball down yet. Ewers was 0-for-4 on deep throws.
"We're there on hitting," said Worthy, who caught seven passes for 90 yards. "I feel like the deep routes and everything in the receiving room ... everybody is good, so they can't just key on one person."
Mechanically, Ewers remains far from perfect. He still tends to throw off his back foot and rely on his arm strength, which doesn’t lend itself to sustained long-term accuracy. Don’t expect Sark to ease off the deep stuff because he deems that essential to this attack, which is missing a home run threat in the departed Bijan Robinson, an NFL rookie who was giving hugs and kissing babies on the sidelines.
“We’re getting closer,” Sarkisian said. “It’s going to feel good when we do hit them. We have to do it because we have to be able to make people defend all three layers of the field — the line of scrimmage, that intermediate throw, then that deep throw.”
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Ewers said his focus has been to give wideouts a chance to go up and get the ball and not try to be perfect. It remains a work in progress and a part of the offense that can eventually take a heaping load of pressure off the run game.
Even if the Horns didn’t strike gold on the vertical stuff, the threat of a home run opened other parts of the passing game, specifically when Ewers found Jordan Whittington on a 26-yard crossing route and tight end J’Tavion Sanders on a quick hitter that went for 44 yards and another score.
We’ve all lived through Ewers' bouts of inaccuracy, but we were also present for that electric first quarter against Bama last season when he completed 9 of 12 passes for 134 yards — including a deep beauty to Worthy — before he departed with a shoulder injury at the end of the first quarter, an injury that caused him to miss the next three games.
There remains plenty of upside on this offense, but the Horns and their quarterback would love to see some early returns.
Like in Tuscaloosa.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas football team will need a better Quinn Ewers against Alabama
