Film Room: The slot fade touchdown to DeAndre Moore Jr. was the result of a savvy Quinn Ewers audible
Quinn Ewers saw something and made a quick decision ahead of the Texas Longhorns’ second touchdown versus the Vanderbilt Commodores on Saturday.
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Tied at 7-7 and driving into Vanderbilt territory, the Longhorns were put into a 3rd-and-8 following a catch and run from Amari Niblack.
Texas lines up with a formation into the boundary before DeAndre Moore Jr. motions to the field.
While running behind the Longhorn offensive line, Moore Jr. heard something from his quarterback.
“The first one, I was motioning over and Quinn changed the play mid-motion,” Moore said. “He told me another play. So I’m like ‘okay, bet. It’s man. Let’s go get it.’ He just called a slot fade, put it up there, and allowed me to go make a play.”
Recognition by all involved, from Ewers on his pre-snap read, to Moore Jr. for keeping his ears open in a stadium where only 28,934 were in attendance, contributed to the Longhorns jumping to a 14-7 lead late in the first quarter thanks to Ewers’ excellent toss.
But it started with Ewers making the call to switch to a staple play in modern offense.
“He has the ability to do that, especially in this offense,” Moore said. “Quinn is the president. If he sees a look he may not like, he can change it to something else just like that.”
On Monday, Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian, who said that play was the only instance of Vanderbilt running man coverage outside of the red zone, explained why Ewers has the license to make calls like that and what happened on that scoring toss.
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“We give quarterbacks the tools to alter route combinations or alter a single player’s route depending on the play, depending on what we have,” Sarkisian said. “Some games more than others. In practice we had practiced that with him motioning and then Quinn signaling the route to him to change the route. In-game, instead of waiting for him to signal and to make sure they might not get the signal from him, he just voiced it to him as he was running by. Which I thought was a pretty high level thing to do as opposed to waiting for him to get there, and signaling it that he might be changing to play. He just told him the route as he was jogging by.”
That was part of a two touchdown day for Moore Jr. In the second quarter, the Longhorns ran what Inside Texas’ Ian Boyd calls “Ezekiel’s Wheel,” against a Vanderbilt cornerback blitz.
The safety attempting to replace the blitzing corner is caught in no-man’s land between Moore Jr. and Silas Bolden. Ewers’ recognizes the need to get the ball out quickly and finds Moore Jr. with only one man to beat, something he does easily on his way to his second score.
Ewers wasn’t perfect but he was 27-for-37 for 288 yards and three touchdowns along with two interceptions.
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And one of the best plays he made may have been with his vocal chords and not his arm.
