Texas Football: Sam Ehlinger’s career shouldn’t carry Longhorns’ struggles

Texas football quarterback Sam Ehlinger continues to perform at a high level. However, his record has netted him a mixed, somewhat undeserved legacy.

Grading the quarterback position often ends unfairly and without enough context. The game’s most important position receives too much praise and too much blame for the overall team performance. If there’s ever a perfect example of the latter, it’s Texas football quarterback Sam Ehlinger.

The leader of the Longhorns for the last three-and-a-half years has put up video game-like numbers — 12,170 career total yards and 117 total touchdowns entering Saturday’s game. He’s also recorded some big-time wins.

The 2018 marquee victory against then-No. 7 Oklahoma, the 2019 Sugar Bowl win against Jake Fromm and No. 6 Georgia and last year’s 38-10 dismantling of No. 12 Utah in the Alamo Bowl all come to mind. Still, Ehlinger is not held in the same regard as many of Texas football’s previous great signal-callers.

This is where many people get into the argument of whether wins are a quarterback stat or not. Fair or unfair, it’s what most quarterbacks are measured by. With that said, is it fair if the quarterback regularly delivers quality to elite performances and still comes up on the short end of the stick?

Ehlinger holds a career record of 23-15, and he’s just 11-7 over the past two years. His numbers in that span — 5,144 passing yards, 49 passing touchdowns, 15 interceptions, 64.1 percent completion rate, 956 rushing yards and 14 rushing touchdowns. The senior quarterback shouldn’t shoulder the bulk of the program’s scrutiny like he does.

Looking at this season and the 2019 campaign, Ehlinger has come up big on a consistent basis, while the defense sits toward the middle or bottom of the country in points allowed, yards allowed, etcetera.

The points per game against for the Longhorns right now is 32.2. Texas is honestly lucky to be at  3-2 through five games, and a matchup at undefeated No. 6 Oklahoma State Saturday won’t make things any easier on what’s been a tough start to the year.

The 2019 season was no different.

Texas’ defense gave up 27.5 points per game, but Ehlinger remained steadfast as one of the country’s best quarterbacks, becoming a more accurate passer, while maintaining his patented, powerful running style.

Sure, Ehlinger has made his own mistakes that’ve cost the Texas football offense. But in the team’s losses to TCU and Oklahoma this year, the offense scored 31 points and 45 points, respectively, only to come up short.

Ehlinger didn’t have his best games through the air, completing just 47-of-89 passes, but he was responsible for nearly 700 combined total yards of offense and 10 total touchdowns against three interceptions.

He’s not a polished passer or efficient game manager at all times, but he’s a gamer. When his number is called, he delivers more often than not.

But in a what-has-someone-done-for-the-fanbase-lately and prisoner-of-the-moment society, it’s the game-ending interception that’s remembered in this year’s Red River Rivalry, not the six-touchdown performance that kept the team alive longer than it should’ve been.

The infamous “we’re back” statement from Ehlinger after the Sugar Bowl win obviously added to the expectations and pressure on the Austin-native, but in fairness to him, he backed up that statement. He’s given Texas the star quarterback it sorely missed since Colt McCoy and took his game to new heights. The team just never went up with him.

The eternally undefeated internet quickly turned his postgame comment into a punch line. Texas is one of those massive programs that people love to watch lose, so they’ve enjoyed reminding him that Texas isn’t back.

He’s never going to have the team success of the other quarterbacks he finds himself amongst statistically in Texas history. Vince Young and McCoy are in a class of their own, but Ehlinger also didn’t inherit situations like those two had either.

Texas football was one of the top five programs in the country during their years under center. Ehlinger entered Texas under a cloud of losing and uncertainty. The Longhorns recorded three straight losing seasons, including back-to-back, 5-7 campaigns, had fired head coach Charlie Strong and just hired current head coach Tom Herman.

Since Ehlinger’s debut season in 2016, the team hasn’t had a losing season, has finished in the AP top-25 in each of the last two years and finds itself in a much more competitive situation than before. None of that happens without him.