Quinn Ewers, still an unfinished character in the story of Texas football

People often struggle to see others with nuance, as if we’re color-blind to shades of gray. We see others as being all good or totally evil, all light or complete darkness. A fan’s relationship with an athlete often mimics the phenomenon we see playing out daily in the real world. The conversations around players especially are framed in absolutes.

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To many fans, an athlete is either clutch or a choker, a hit or a bust, made up of all their strengths or defined solely by their deficiencies. Often times, it can even flip from one extreme to the other, with neither being accurate. Think about the dialogue around one of my all-time favorite Texas players, quarterback Sam Ehlinger. In Longhorns fans’ minds, he went from an unreliable gunslinger at the beginning of his career to an infallible soldier. But to view him only in those terms deprives the fan of what actually made Ehlinger great. He was a flawed player who sucked every drop out of his own talent, maximized his abilities, and made me love the Longhorns more in an era when it was extremely difficult to do so.

My first Texas article was about him because he was an easy muse. Ehlinger felt like a biblical character to me—full of tragedy, faith, hope, and triumph. I think college football is great because it gives us these characters, who aren’t finished products. The fan meets a player during a formative time in their life, and they evolve in front of our eyes—both to our applause and in spite of our moans and pleas for instant gratification. We don’t ever truly know them, but that doesn’t stop us from having a relationship with them. To perceive them as characters, as I do, might even be reductive.

But like I said, we can’t ever know them fully, so there’s a lot left up to our own imaginations. Our perceptions of athletes are usually just outlines or tracings at best, and the color that goes between the lines is filled in with more experiences, more data, more interaction.

The talk around current Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers seems to always take place upon the field of absolute statements, as if he’s always this or never that. He’s either the thorn in Steve Sarkisian’s side or the key to unlocking the door to the Promised Land. They criticize his body language or praise his even-keeled demeanor. Everything with Ewers becomes a game of “I told you so!” The throws he makes and the ones he doesn’t only serve to validate biases—those of fans and pundits alike.

Fans and pundits alike struggle to reconcile the mulleted teen with a perfect recruiting ranking and a 70-yard arm with who he’s become. There’s a ton of character development ignored in this narrative, with little attention given to the wild journey Ewers has taken since he originally committed to Tom Herman in the summer of 2020. He’s as much a product of that journey—the high school career cut short, the stop in Columbus, Ohio, the injuries—as he is the talent that made him such a tantalizing prospect in the first place.

Going into the 2024 season, even those with genuine intentions hoped that Ewers would level up—and he has, though not without bumps and bruises. We hoped he’d improve on throwing the right ball and executing off-schedule plays. We hoped he’d make the plays he couldn’t against Washington last year from the 12-yard line.

This season has proven that Ewers will never be perfect—because no one is. A common adage about him is, “He is who he is at this point.” That’s also often said about the 2024 Longhorns, who continuously show a preternatural ability to play with their food and struggle to finish off opponents. But I’m not sure these statements are accurate, because Ewers’ and the Longhorns’ story isn’t finished.

The late interception against Arizona State would have been a cruel way for his story at Texas to end. Even though the game had plenty of other context, it would have tipped the scales in favor of those who see him as this team’s issue. For a moment, it looked like the interception would become the lasting image of Ewers in burnt orange and white. But in a moment of symmetry with last year’s Washington game, and with the season on the line, Ewers delivered. With 13 yards or less standing between the Longhorns and elimination, his time in a Texas uniform seemed likely finished. Sarkisian likes to call Ewers a “steady sea.” Watch him pre-snap before the now famous 4th-and-13 touchdown to Matthew Golden, and you’ll see exactly what he means.

Here are the big overtime play calls from @Hornvoice and @rwallacekxan

Synced to the broadcast of course pic.twitter.com/7deXj9QF0d

— Nash (@NashTalksTexas) January 4, 2025

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The play and its aftermath mean, very obviously, that the Longhorns’ season is still alive. But they also proved, once again, that Ewers won’t be defined by our absolutes. He’s a character on a journey that’s made up of nuance and more than the polarizing conversations that surround him. The fact that he’s back in another playoff semifinal—this time against his former team, the Ohio State Buckeyes—allows his audience to see his journey play out even further. And the outline in which we see him has room for more color still.