I was talking with my longtime friend Mike Frank last week about Quinn Ewers’ performances in the Georgia and Vanderbilt games. We agreed that Ewers appears to have lost his confidence. At the same time, Texas’ offense suddenly resembled a Greg Davis offense. Fairly or not, a Greg Davis offense is synonymous with ineffective sideways passes thrown behind or near the line of scrimmage for thousands of Texas fans.

Is the comparison of the current Texas offense to the “Greg Davis Offense” fair? Here are two statistics from the Vanderbilt game that say yes.

1. 27 of Ewers’ 36 pass attempts were targeted behind the line of scrimmage or 0-9 yards down field.
2. Average depth of target is a statistic that I wasn’t familiar with until a couple of weeks ago. Anyway, Ewers’ average depth of target (ADOT) versus Vanderbilt was 5.5 yards. For the season, Ewers is last in the SEC in ADOT and 285^th in the country. Keep in mind there are only 134 teams in Division 1.

My man, Paul Wadlington found an interesting statistical comparison of Ewers pass attempts in 2024 versus 2023. In intermediate passing attempts (10-20 yards downfield) Ewers completed 68.6 % and 28.6% of all his attempts in the intermediate range. In 2024, Ewers is completing 50% of his intermediate attempts, and they’re only 19% of his total attempts. Currently, Texas has a dink and dunk passing attack. That’s not what Steve Sarkisian’s offense is known for.

So, what’s going on here?  Ewers has clearly been in a slump since he came back from his injury. When Sarkisian pulled Ewers in the first half against Georgia, he said it was because Quinn wasn’t seeing things downfield that he should be seeing.  In other words, Ewers wasn’t reading the defense. He wasn’t reading the defense because he was busy looking at the rush and back peddling. Sarkisian isn’t game planning and calling dink and dunk plays but Ewers instead of throwing to intermediate targets is checking down to receivers near the line of scrimmage.

If Ewers continues to struggle what will it take for Sarkisian to pull him in favor of Manning?  Will Sarkisian decide based on which quarterback gives the team the best chance of winning, or will he factor in Ewers’ draft status and professional prospects?

Playoff Projection

So, Texas is seeded 5^th in the first release of the projected playoff bracket. This first release is almost meaningless because so many games are left to be played. But if Texas is seeded fifth in the final bracket, how they go there will be important. The worst possible scenario would be that they got there by losing the SEC Championship game. That would mean that Texas would have played a 13^th game and would not get a first-round bye. It would be better if somehow they didn’t get in the SEC Championship game and were awarded the fifth seed, saving them the wear and tear of the SEC Championship game. The best scenario would be winning the SEC Championship and getting a first-round bye.

Florida

This season, there has been drama surrounding the Florida football program and its head coach, Billy Napier. He is in his third season at Florida and has a 15- 18 overall record and 8-13 in the SEC.  The situation seems equivalent to Charlie Strong’s third and final season at Texas. Napier is supposedly off the hot seat after Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin announced on social media that Napier will continue as head coach. Ahh, yes, the dreaded public vote of confidence.

Florida is 4-4 this year and 2-3 in the SEC. Their common opponents with Texas are Mississippi St., whom they beat 45-28, and Georgia, whom they played last week competitively but lost 34-20. In the Georgia game, their starting quarterback, DJ Lagway, pulled a hamstring and is questionable to play. Lagway was the number one quarterback recruit in the country in the 2024 class.

This game sets up well for Texas coming off a bye while Florida is coming off the Georgia game.

Hook ‘em,

W.E.