OUT OF THE ASHES

The air was thick with pressure. Constant noise … a turn of rattling cowbells and slapping paddles … a ticking reminder of the dwindling time. The consequences of the next play were clearcut and sobering: an incompletion would end the game, a game Texas needed to win before the calendar turned to October and the schedule became unforgiving.

One completion and the Longhorns may have a chance. The hum reached a crescendo as David Ash dropped his right arm ….

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down toward his knee, catching the snap. He took a few quick drop steps and locked onto an unlikely target — one with some room to run after the catch. But the throw had to be perfect.

The biggest game of Ash’s life — surely, the first of many big games — had come down to a throw. Two months ago, Texas fans would’ve cringed at the idea of a game riding on Ash and his arm.

Ash was late for class. He’s scarfing down a chicken wing while standing over a trashcan. The scene is rather barbaric, how intensely he’s eating, with napkins flying and sauce staining his lips. But his weekly time with the local media took an hour and ESPN was waiting for his telephone call right after he finished. No wonder why he’s late.

The demand is big for the quarterback who improbably led the Longhorns to a 41-36 win at Oklahoma State two days earlier and, after two years of negative coverage, the Texas media relations team isn’t going to let a chance at positive promotion slip by. Ash fills up his styrofoam take-home box with chicken wings, this even after “going back for thirds,” according to the Pluckers catering team.

He tops his cup off with more sweet tea and heads for the Belmont Hall elevator, but not before grabbing one more chicken wing that he bites into as he walks out. The sophomore is in a good, comfortable place right now. Much more than last season, when the quarterback dominoes fell unexpectedly and the early-enrollee with plans to redshirt found himself the starter by the sixth game.

Ash simply wasn’t ready for the gig and the Texas coaching staff worked around his limitations, which, as he’d admit, were far-ranging.  How little the Texas coaches trusted Ash was on display in a win over Texas Tech that season. Ash threw the ball seven times. He completed four of those passes.

After charging into the secondary time and time again to throw a block, wide receiver Mike Davis walked back to the line of scrimmage as a cornerback barked, “Since when did you guys turn into Georgia Tech?”

A year later, Davis concedes such a question — why had the Longhorns taken on the form of a triple-option run team? Last year was a tough time to be a wide receiver. “That was awful,” Davis said. “We had to do what fit Ash, since he’s the quarterback — [the offense] is dependent on him. We talked about throwing the ball more last fall but not everything works out perfectly. We had to do what we could do, which was run the ball.”

The week before he broke the hearts of the Cowboys, whom he also faced in his first career start as a freshman, Ash went home to Belton for the baptism of his younger brother, Ian. He referred to the event as “the best thing that will happen to me this year.”

Ash went dove hunting as well, as did teammate Mason Walters, who bagged 12 birds. When asked to reveal his total tally, the wheels spin in Ash’s head, like he’s giving serious thought to embellishing a bit. Then he smiles sheepishly.  “Four.” Ash is mild-mannered. This trait didn’t help him much in the huddle as a freshman, when he seemed “shocked” at times, as Davis recalled. His command is better now. “I tell him all the time he’s the best quarterback in the Big 12,” Davis said. “He’s got a swagger now. I’m not saying he’s cocky, but he’s confident.” With good reason.

Ash became the fastest player in school history to reach 1,000 yards passing in a season. Passing for over 300 yards in consecutive games, which Ash achieved against Ole Miss and Oklahoma State, had been done only three times before. Ash was named the Davey O’Brien Quarterback of the Week after throwing four touchdowns against the Rebels. His name found itself on several Heisman lists as summer started to turn to fall.

The accolades and positive promotion seem surreal for the guy who won the quarterback job in fall camp. Ash’s numbers as a freshman — four touchdowns, eight interceptions — were unarguably poor. He entered the first game against Wyoming with most thinking Texas would win in spite of him, not because of him. Mack Brown wasn’t wholly convincing of the choice to tab Ash as the starter over junior Case McCoy, a Longhorn cult hero in his own right for leading the white-knuckle drive over Texas A&M. “David ended up having a little more edge,” Brown said back in August. “That was it.”

The best-case scenario was that Ash would lean on a running game and a defense, while simply  23 passes (82.6 percent) for 326 yards and four touchdowns, both career highs at the time. “Before last week, I don’t think anybody liked me. Now everybody likes me,” Ash said afterward.

His performance harkens back to the days of Colt McCoy, when one could count game-bygame incompletions on one hand. Just don’t expect Ash to sit at a podium and tell you about it. “The good thing about David, and it’s a very different thing, was that Vince [Young] was emotional, Colt was emotional, and David is not,” Brown said. “You get simple answers with him and there’s not a lot of emotion on the field.” Once, the media asked Ash if he had finally arrived. “No,” he said. Reporters asked if he liked the idea of playing in a high-scoring shootout. “I like the idea of having to score more than the other team,” he said.

When a journalist asked him if he had any thoughts on Kenny Vaccaro’s saying the home stadium wasn’t loud, Ash leaned back uncomfortably in his chair and called for Texas’ Associate Athletics Director for Media Relations. Ash was taught not to be overtly demonstrative. “I get excited, but maybe I don’t show it. My dad always told me when something good happens you need to act like it’s happened before. When something bad happens, don’t get down about it,” he said. Stephen Ash also taught his son how to stay cool under pressure, a lesson that came in handy as the Longhorns entered conference play.

Elite quarterbacks bring their team back from the dead. Twice, Vince Young made time stand still in Pasadena. He owned the night in Columbus, too. Colt McCoy marched quickly down the field against Ohio State in the desert. Both engineered comebacks in Stillwater, with Young pump-faking a helpless defensive back out of his shoes and running 80 yards and Mc- Coy erasing a 21-point halftime deficit. Now Ash too has Stillwater atop his résumé.

The play, Crash X, was one Texas ran often and with success earlier in the season. Davis scored against New Mexico leveraging Crash X. The play calls for Jaxon Shipley to run a seam read down the field, with the flexibility to improvise his route. Davis runs an underneath route to the left hash. Tight end D.J. Grant runs a drag toward the right hash.

The play, with the Longhorns facing fourthand- six from the Oklahoma State 29, down 36- 34 with two minutes remaining in the game, couldn’t fail. “‘This better not be it’ was going through my head” Ash said. At the line of scrimmage, Ash noticed the Cowboys were playing man-to-man coverage with the safety lined up wide.

Before the ball was snapped, he knew he was throwing to Grant, who dropped a high pass on third down earlier in the game. But he figured Grant would have an angle on his defender, with the potential for extra yardage. “D.J. has been reliable for a long time, I had no doubt he could make the play,” Ash said.

Like a screw, the ball coiled itself perfectly into Grant’s hands. The window was the size of a textbook, but Ash rifled the ball in there as hard as he could. “If [the pass] gets picked off, who cares at that point,” he said, after throwing an interception earlier in the game. “You gun it in there and hope your guy makes a play for you.” Grant’s catch and run was enough for the first down and after the Cowboys pushed him out of bounds at the Oklahoma State 49, the Longhorns found their second life.

Two plays later, Ash lofted a deep pass down the right sideline to Davis, who jumped high for it and made a circus catch. Joe Bergeron rumbled in from two yards out two plays later, and the game was history.  “His demeanor was no different coming off the field after the interception than it was after the fourth-and-six completion,” Brown said.

Delirium spread among a burnt-orange pocket of fans above the northeast end zone at Boone Pickens Stadium. As Ash jogged off the field, one male fan, at the top of his lungs, gave him an R-rated, 13-letter middle name — a term of endearment. Ash, if he had heard, would’ve likely disapproved.

Right by the section he went, holding his helmet in his left hand and making the “Hook ‘em” sign with his right. Sections 120, 228 and 334 called out his name, practically begging for a more satisfying show of euphoria. A chest pound, a fist pump, a Tarzanian yell — something, anything.

But Ash stared straight ahead, stoic like a statue, with his right arm extended and unwavering. Not even a smile cracked his face. His sweat-soaked hair, bobbing around his neck, was all that moved. Ash entered the locker room, a different quarterback than the one who took the field four hours earlier. And yet in other ways, he hadn’t changed that much at all.

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