Texas coach Steve Sarkisian has a quarterback situation that his former boss, Nick Saban, has seen before.
The former Alabama offensive coordinator has two quarterbacks who are starting caliber – Quinn Ewers and Arch Manning. After Ewers left last week’s 56-7 victory over UTSA with an oblique injury, Manning produced five touchdowns, and the highly regard redshirt freshman will make his first college start on Saturday against Louisiana-Monroe.
During ESPN’s “College GameDay” on Saturday, Saban likened the Texas QB situation to what he faced with the Crimson Tide in 2017.
Quarterback Jalen Hurts had been the SEC Offensive Player of the Year and led Alabama to the SEC championship and a spot in the CFP national-championship game in 2016 as a freshman. But in 2017, the Tide added quarterback Tua Tagovailoa and gave the new freshman a chance to play while Hurts remained the starter.
“This kind of goes hand-in-hand with the Jalen Hurts-Tua situation we had,” Saban said in discussing Texas’ Ewers and Manning. “Jalen was 26-2 as a starter, but we played Tua as much as we could because we knew there was going to be a time when he was going to need to go in the game and win the game when Jalen Hurts wasn’t available or wasn’t able to, so this is exactly what Texas’ situation is, which is very good long-term because depth on your team is going to have a significant impact this year with all the games you got to play in the playoffs.”
Tagovailoa’s time came at halftime of the CFP national-championship game against Georgia on Jan. 8, 2018. With Alabama trailing 13-0 after two quarters, Tagovailoa took over at quarterback for Hurts and threw three touchdown passes (including the game-winner in overtime) as the Crimson Tide won the title with a 26-23 victory.
Before that, Tagovailoa had played enough in eight games to complete 35-of-53 passes for 470 yards with eight touchdowns and one interception in relief of Hurts.
The next season, the roles were reversed, with Tagovailoa as the starter. In 2019, Hurts transferred to Oklahoma.
Both quarterbacks entered the NFL in 2020 draft and became starters during their rookie seasons. Hurts, with the Philadelphia Eagles, and Tagovailoa, with the Miami Dolphins, still hold those NFL roles, although Tagovailoa is on injured reserve after sustaining a concussion last week.
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After Ewers got hurt during last week’s game, Manning completed 9-of-12 passes for 223 yards and four touchdowns and broke a 67-yard touchdown run against UTSA.
Sarkisian moved this week to head off any quarterback controversy by saying Ewers would return to the starting spot when healthy.
“One thing I tried to impress upon Quinn is all the goals he had and that we’ve had for him coming into the season are all still there for him,” Sarkisian said on Thursday. “I think we have a national championship-caliber team, and he’s the quarterback of that team.”
During an appearance on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show,” Saban said he liked Sarkisian getting ahead of the situation.
“I think what he did in the press conference yesterday sort of sent the message loud and clear that we have a championship-caliber team and have an opportunity to maybe do something special with this team and Quinn Ewers is the quarterback,”Saban said. “And I think that’s probably the way it should be.”
ULM and Texas kick off at 7 p.m. CDT Saturday at Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin, Texas. ESPN+ will televise the game.
Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.
