am Ehlinger promises he
was not planning to say
those words. You know the
ones. “Big words,” as his
coach Tom Herman puts it.
Last New Year’s Day,
Texas beat Georgia 28–21 in the
Sugar Bowl to seal its first
10-win season since 2009.
Ehlinger ran for three
touchdowns, completed a
two-point conversion, and
was named MVP. The
Longhorns’ defense held one of
the SEC’s most physical teams to a
season-low 284 total yards on 4.4 yards
per play. The performance seemed like
validation that, after a decade of
mediocrity, Texas football had turned
a corner.
“We’re baaaaaack,” he said, holding
the ‘a’ for four seconds.
Ehlinger had just completed a
breakout sophomore season—his first as
the full-time starting quarterback. He
had 16 rushing touchdowns to surpass
Vince Young’s school single-season
record for a QB (14 in 2004) and came
close to Colt McCoy’s ’08 record for most
overall TDs in a season. (Ehlinger had
41, four fewer than McCoy.) While
standing on stage at the Superdome,
surrounded by his teammates, Ehlinger
was feeling good. When asked how this
gritty victory might propel the program
forward, he didn’t hesitate to deliver
a message.
Texas has always been one of those
programs that’s easy to hate. “Texas
is back” became a meme after thethe 2016 season opener... then finished
5–7. Slapping that phrase acrossminor achievements (or
mistakes) was a way for
haters to poke fun at the
team for not living up
to expectations.has finished in the Top 25 onlyOklahoma, the Horns have a shot atwhich is exactly what Herman, who has
his sights set beyond a mere return to
relevance, is aiming for.
“We’ll never use that phrase in our
program because there’s a finality to it,”
Herman said at Big 12 media days in July.
“We’ll never arrive at being ‘back.’ We will
always be pushing to improve.”
At the same time, Herman will cuthow important it is to his quarterback
for him to not just be part of this new“a main reason for it.”TEXAS FOREVER
The face of this comeback is a 6' 3",
230-pound Austin native who was