Can Quinn Ewers keep his strong road record going in Fayetteville and College Station?

Quinn Ewers probably hasn’t been what Texas fans expected from the third-year former No. 1 player in high school, even with an impressive overall record and list accolades as the quarterback at Texas.

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Ewers brought the Longhorns to a College Football Playoff appearance and a conference championship last season, and was ninth among Power 5 quarterbacks in passing yards per game. With another offseason under offensive guru Steve Sarkisian’s tutelage, Ewers was named one of the three most likely players to win the Heisman Trophy in 2024.

Despite these expectations, Ewers has had an up-and-down season. He’s already thrown as many interceptions as he did in 2023 and another injury hindered him against Oklahoma and Georgia, where the quarterback had one of the worst halves of his career. Instead of being top-10 in YPG, Ewers is now 22nd among P4 quarterbacks in the same stat that he was fantastic at a year ago.

Still, Texas is a one-loss team and currently slotted into the No. 2 seed in the College Football Playoff, a fantastic spot for any program. Ewers has seemed to bounce back from that lingering abdominal injury, as the QB threw for 333 yards and five touchdowns in one half and one possession against Florida this past Saturday. That same quarterback that fans were hoping to see for an entire 12-game schedule may be back, but he’s got a lot on his plate from here on out.

Texas will travel to Arkansas this weekend and Texas A&M two weeks later, two of the team’s four road games in a three-week stretch, with two environments that hate the Longhorns more than they like themselves. But, as said best by Sarkisian in Wednesday’s press conference, that’s not a problem for the veteran QB. 

“I think his general demeanor is helpful when you go on the road,” Sarkisian said about Ewers. “He doesn’t get too emotional, too high, too low. It’s pretty even keel. And I think that’s important when you’re on the road. I think that’s important for us as a team. I think poise and composure is always critical when you’re on the road, and he exemplifies that.”

As mentioned above, Ewers has only had to play in two road games so far, one against Michigan in Week 2 and one against Vanderbilt in the Longhorn’s eighth game of the season. In those two games, Ewers went 2-0, completing 70% of his passes for 534 yards and six touchdowns in basically seven quarters, as Texas was so far ahead in Ann Arbor that he attempted just two passes in the fourth quarter. If not for two tipped pass interceptions in Nashville, Ewers would’ve been almost perfect on the road this season, and two separate passer ratings over 150 prove that point. 

But just how reliable is Ewers on the road? To start his Texas career the answer would’ve been not reliable at all. In his first-ever true road game, Ewers threw three interceptions and completed just 39% of his passes in an embarrassing loss against Oklahoma State. It was the worst performance of his career, one so notable that Texas has used it as a point of inflection to prove the rise of the program under the young quarterback. Since that late October game, Texas has won 20 of 23 (87%) regular season games. But what most stands out in that stat is that none of those three losses were on the “road,” at least not technically.

Ewers has the following stats in road games since the loss in Stillwater:

9-0, 68% Comp, 2289 Yards (254 YPG), 18 TD – 3 INT, 155 AVG Passer Rating

And these don’t even fully do the quarterback justice, as his two worst passing games on the road came in the 2022 seasons. So how does it look since the start of 2023?

7-0, 70% Comp, 1985 Yards (284 YPG), 15 TD – 3 INT, 164 AVG Passer Rating 

That yards per game and completion number are extremely similar to the stats of Dillon Gabriel this year, one of the three quarterbacks to hand Texas a regular season loss since OK ST and tied for second on FanDuel’s Heisman odds. 

Just for the fun of it, let’s take one last look at some condensed stats. Here are Ewers’ stats in the four toughest environments he’s played in since 2023, Alabama, Michigan, TCU and Iowa State.

4-0, 66% Comp, 1193 Yards (298 YPG), 9 TD – 1 INT, 158 AVG Passer Rating

His passer rating stats take a hit, mostly from the hostile Tuscaloosa crowd when Texas beat Alabama last year. Still, these games are good base points to look at when discussing Arkansas and Texas A&M, arguably the two hardest road environments Ewers will ever play in.

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If Ewers plays to his historical norm on the road in Fayetteville and College Station, the Longhorns should take care of business.