By Steve Habel, Senior Contributing Writer
AUSTIN, Texas — This will be the first feature of the 2019 season written by our publication on Texas quarterback Sam Ehlinger, but if the 10th-ranked Longhorns live up to their hype and lofty expectations, it surely won’t be the last.
Ehlinger, the steely-eyed, über-confident gunslinger from Austin’s Westlake High School, is ready for his place in the sun as the Longhorns prepare to battle Louisiana Tech to open their campaign of promise and pride.
[s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)]
“I’m so excited,” Ehlinger said Tuesday. “I’ve been itching since January for this weekend.”
Ehlinger begins the season as the Big 12’s preseason Offensive Player of the Year and enters the season with a bevy of oh-wow stats and big-time performances. There is no single player on the Longhorns’ roster who exudes more strut and leadership and come-and-take-it self-identity than the junior quarterback.
Senior wideout Collin Johnson, who is set to be one of Ehlinger’s main targets this season, said he has not seen any dropoff in competitiveness from the quarterback.
“When a guy is established as that guy, sometimes you can see that person getting a little lazy or whatever,” Johnson said. “That’s not the case with Sam. He always plays with a chip on his shoulder, practices with a chip on his shoulder.”
Ehlinger, who started all 14 games for Texas last year, threw for 3,292 of UT’s 3,615 yards in 2018, and he was responsible for 41 of the Longhorns’ 52 offensive touchdowns last season. He also rushed for 482 yards and 16 scores, setting the school record for most rushing touchdowns by a quarterback.
Ehlinger is the only player in UT history to pass for at least 25 touchdowns and rush for at least 15 in a season. He is only the sixth Power Five quarterback to reach those numbers in the last 20 years; the other five all were Heisman Trophy winners.
The Texas coaches would like for Ehlinger to run less, but the quarterback’s competitiveness gets stoked when he pulls down the ball and takes a few hits.
“We’re going to need (Ehlinger) in the run game,” Texas coach Tom Herman said. “You’d like to keep his physicality at a minimum. But he’s got two speeds: off and full … and it’s usually full.”
Plenty of defenders will try to rattle Ehlinger’s cage, but taking on the signal caller can be humbling, and painful, for tacklers who think it will be easy. More often than not, it is Ehlinger who gets the best of the physical confrontations.
He thrives on that energy early in games.
“It definitely wakes me up a little bit,” Ehlinger said of getting hit. “It’s like everyone’s always not really knowing what to expect until you run down on that kickoff and get that first hit. Then it’s ‘alright, here we go.’”
Texas will go only as far as Ehlinger will take them, but that could be a long way.
The much-anticipated start of the 2019 Longhorns’ season comes at 7 p.m. Saturday when Texas hosts Louisiana Tech at DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium.
[/s2If] [s2If !current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)] [habeabk] [/s2If]
Discover more from Horns Illustrated
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.