Texas has genuine gunslinger in Ehlinger
QB’s play during freshman season has been a mix of the exhilarating and the horrifying
AUSTIN — The thing about gunslingers is every draw is a mystery. Even the best miss their mark now and then. And there’s just something so remarkably alluring about that great unknown.
Texas true freshman quarterback Sam Ehlinger is, in football jargon, a gunslinger, a sort of spiritual successor to Brett Favre and Ken Stabler. He’s a bit brazen and overzealous and devil-may-care. He’s also incredibly talented and resourceful.
Nearly every snap with Ehlinger running the show feels like an untethered tightrope walk 30 stories up. It is, for those vested parties watching, equal parts exhilarating and horrifying.
On one play, he might mastermind an escape from pressure then whip a seed on the run to a streaking receiver. The next, he might tuck the ball, take off and flatten a defender or two as his teammates look on in awe. But he’s just as likely to follow a positive play with an inexplicable, hair-pulling, blood-pressure amplifying turnover.
It happened against fourthranked Southern Cal. It happened against 10thranked Oklahoma State at a point in the game when he probably should not have even been playing after sustaining a hard hit to the head. And it happened once more during UT’s regular-season finale against Texas Tech.
“Yeah, it’s concerning,” coach Tom Herman said. “I mean, I’d be lying if I told you it wasn’t. But I think there’s no greater teacher than experience. At some point, you know, when you continue to make the same mistakes, you’ve got to try a different approach. So we’ll figure out what buttons to push, and we’ll work really, really hard to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
It probably will, though, at least as long as Herman believes Ehlinger represents this team’s best option. And the former Austin Westlake star does possess so much potential. Every outing, he makes a handful of plays that make one shake their head in wonderment.
Ehlinger pushed USC and No. 12 Oklahoma to the brink. He manufactured a doubleovertime win over Kansas State, throwing for 380 yards and rushing for 107 in the process. He steered the Longhorns to a bowl bid-clinching victory over No. 24 West Virginia.
“He moves our offense,” offensive coordinator Tim Beck said a few days after that 28-14 win. “He found ways to make plays, some of those in critical situations. He tucked the ball and ran when he needed to; he threw it when he needed to and controlled our team. The tempo, the emotion, the physicality, energy — those are the things right now that he brings to the offense.
“For lack of a better term, you feel him in the game, and that’s a little bit of what you need now. What we needed offensively is to have some of that: having that demonstrative quarterback.”
Even after Ehlinger fumbled near USC’s goal line in double overtime at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, effectively giving the Trojans the win, his teammates couldn’t help at marvel at what they had just witnessed.
“That kid always has heart,” linebacker Malik Jefferson said. “He represented a lot tonight of what we want to be.”
For most of the season, Ehlinger essentially has embodied everything this Texas football team is: a maddeningly inconsistent vessel of immense talent and potential.
Ehlinger seemed to have turned a corner in UT’s road win over West Virginia. Then he tossed two absolutely indefensible interceptions with under six minutes remaining in that 27-23 defeat to Texas Tech on Black Friday.
To Ehlinger’s credit, he did not try dancing around what happened.
“Very frustrating,” Ehlinger said. “You want to learn from your mistakes and never let them happen again, especially crucial ones like that. For it to happen again and let down the team again, it’s awful.”
Herman has not yet announced a starter for the Texas Bowl.
At his best, Ehlinger can absolutely beat Missouri. Herman and Beck certainly know that. Thing is, it’s almost impossible to tell which version of Ehlinger will show up on any given play.
Then again, that’s just life with a gunslinger.