Texas fans have been clamoring for the Quinn Ewers experience for a while now, and the day finally came when he suited up a Longhorn for spring practice on Tuesday.
It was a long treacherous journey to getting here, as it included him skipping his senior year of high school, enrolling at Ohio State and then hitting the transfer portal after being buried on the depth chart.
He finally made his way back where Longhorns fan expected him to be all along: Austin. Ewers is now tasked with beating out Hudson Card for the starting job. Card has the advantage of being in the system longer, but after winning the job last season he struggled mightily and was pulled during the second game.
Many assume that it is Ewers’ job regardless of how well Card does, but Steve Sarkisian will be giving both of them a chance to win the job. The Longhorns had their first spring practice on Tuesday where many media members were eager to ask about Ewers.
Here is what Sarkisian said about the young gun slinger as reported by 247Sports:
“I think he’s doing fine,” Sarkisian said after Ewers’ debut this week at Texas. “I mean, that was his first practice with us. It wasn’t perfect, but clearly, he had a decent understanding of what we were trying to do. Naturally, he got a four months, five months under his belt in a really good system at Ohio State. So a lot of the same concepts are very similar.
Sarkisian later explained how important it is for Ewers to get more comfortable in the system this offseason.
Clearly, the verbiage is different and then you throw signals on top of that. So your mind can start racing. We just tried to keep him as calm as we could, to allow him to be the best player that he can be. And so, that’s always going to be the evaluation of him but also the evaluation of us of how much we’re putting on him to be in the best position to be successful.
He also explained how well he thinks Ewers has adapted thus far.
I think he’s been great. I think, a lot of times, when guys transfer, you see it go two ways — you see some guys come in and really immerse themselves into it, you see other guys kind of wait back and get a feel for how it’s happening. I think Quinn’s done a nice job of kind of immersing himself into it and not being so caught up in, ‘Am I the starter, am I not?’ But focusing on what he needs to focus on to be the best player that he can be — and he’s done that, I think he’s put in a lot of work. I’ve seen a lot of guys have a lot worse first practices in a brand-new offense and trying to figure it all out. So, clearly, you can see the work that he’s put in. But there’s a bunch for us to work on.
Texas fans are eager to see Ewers in action, but as of right now he is splitting reps with Card and will be for the foreseeable future. He has potential to be a generational talent, but he must walk before he can run, something we can gather from Sarkisian’s comments about him.