J.D. PicKell: Quarterback stability is the biggest key to the 2022 season for Texas

On3’s J.D. PicKell continues to dissect college football ahead of the start of the 2022 campaign. And recently, the college football analyst gave his perspective on the Texas Longhorns and what will make them successful this year. According to PicKell, quarterback stability will be Texas’s biggest key to success in 2022.

“This is perhaps the most important piece of Texas achieving success in 2022, to me, is the stability at the quarterback position,” said PicKell. “Something they didn’t really have a whole lot of season; it was Hudson Card, then it was Casey Thompson; ultimately, Thompson was your guy for the rest of the year. But when you have two leaders on offense, you have none. And to be frank, Quinn Ewers didn’t come to Austin to sit. He came to play. So assuming he’s going to be the guy in Austin, you need to stick with him and need to stick with him through the up through the downs through week 2; whatever happens at Alabama onward.”

You can check out what all PicKell had to say on the Longhorns in the video below.

During various parts of the season, Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian jumped back and forth between his two quarterbacks, Thompson and Card. And as any quarterback will tell you, at the college level and above, the constant interchanging can affect their rhythm. This sometimes appeared to be the case in late-game situations where the Longhorns struggled to put together a drive to protect their late-game leads. But despite that, it was not as if the two quarterbacks struggled and put up horrendous numbers. It’s more so that Sarkisian appeared to have trouble deciding which quarterback to use. This year the Texas head man cannot afford to struggle with that decision, especially with the state and nation’s top quarterback Quinn Ewers as the likely starter for 2022.

“In this marriage, Quinn Ewers is gonna be a different quarterback in week 2 against Alabama than he is and week 9,” PicKell said. “You have to stick with the ups and downs, the bumps and bruises; it’s not gonna be a ready-made solution for Texas, for Quinn Ewers. It’s probably going to take some time for him to get up to speed.”

With Ewers reclassifying last year and heading to college a year earlier, he got to experience what the game was like at the next level with the Ohio State Buckeyes. However, the Southlake Carroll product wanted to play sooner rather than later, which led to his transfer from Ohio State. Now that he’s with Texas, Ewers has the opportunity to showcase the skill set that made him the nation’s top recruit in 2022. But what must go hand in hand with that is Sarkisian allowing his young quarterback to grow and blossom on the field.

The duo will face a tough test right out the gate as they will face off against the Alabama Crimson Tide and their vaunted defense. That game will be a week 2 match-up scheduled for Sept. 9 at 11 a.m CT.