Texas Likely to Keep 2 QB Attack for Now at BetLM

Texas Likely to Keep 2 QB Attack for Now

AUSTIN, Texas —Texas’ two-headed quar­ter­back attack looks like it will sur­vive for at least another week.

Even after a 55–17 loss to No. 3 Okla­homa in which sopho­more Case McCoy and fresh­man David Ash made crit­i­cal mis­takes, offen­sive coor­di­na­tor Bryan Harsin said Mon­day he still thinks the rota­tion Texas has been using for sev­eral weeks can work.

The No. 22 Long­horns (4–1, 1–1 Big 12) host No. 6 Okla­homa State (5–0, 2–0) on Saturday.

Harsin said Texas’ trou­bles on offense against Okla­homa went far beyond mis­takes by the quar­ter­backs, from bad play by the offen­sive line and fum­bles by receivers to his own play-calling.

“It’s not all on the quar­ter­backs,” Harsin said. “That game was so extreme from the adver­sity stand­point … Nei­ther one gave of them gave up, nei­ther one of them hung their head. I can live with that.”

But McCoy and Ash were at the cen­ter of Texas’ prob­lems against the swarm­ing Soon­ers defense that pro­duced five turnovers, eight sacks and held the No. 22 Long­horns to 36 yards rushing.

McCoy had two fum­bles and Ash threw a pair of inter­cep­tions, with the Soon­ers return­ing one of each for touch­downs. Ash was 11 for 20 for 110 yards and McCoy was 9 of 16 for 116 yards. Ash threw a TD pass to Jaxon Ship­ley late in the fourth quar­ter for Texas’ only offen­sive touchdown.

Ash took the bulk of the snaps in the fourth quar­ter lead­ing some to believe that Texas may be ready to lean on the fresh­man to take over more of the offense. Harsin wouldn’t go that far but said both play­ers have a chance to sep­a­rate them­selves into the clear No. 1 every week.

It just hasn’t hap­pened yet.

“Their under­stand­ing of the offense is equal,” Harsin said. “It comes down to … tough­ness, talk about prepa­ra­tion, talk about deci­sion mak­ing, talk about accuracy.”

The Long­horns don’t have any options beyond those two because they are the only schol­ar­ship quar­ter­backs on the ros­ter. Gar­rett Gilbert, the for­mer starter who lost his job to the McCoy-Ash rota­tion after the sec­ond game, had shoul­der surgery and announced last week that he will transfer.

Texas senior run­ning back Fozzy Whit­taker, who scored a touch­down on a 100-yard kick­off return against the Soon­ers, sug­gested the young quar­ter­backs got rat­tled by the super-charged atmos­phere of the Cot­ton Bowl and speed of the game in Texas’ fiercest annual rivalry.

“I told them this was a big learn­ing curve for them,” Whit­taker said. “Those guys felt bad. It was a totally dif­fer­ent atmos­phere than they were used to. I told them every year it’s going to be like that com­ing into this game. Now they know what to expect.

“I felt like they were pre­pared enough, If just feel like some­times it just seemed like the atmos­phere might have got to them a lit­tle bit. Ulti­mately I feel they’ll be fine. We get to play at home in front of our crowd and I feel like our crowd will have our back,” Whit­taker said.

Texas coach Mack Brown sought to keep his young QBs from los­ing their con­fi­dence after such a beating.

“Keep your head up and keep work­ing,” Brown said he told them on Sun­day after the game.

But Brown also had a mes­sage for assis­tants on offense and defense.

“They’ve got to bring the quar­ter­backs along fur­ther,” Brown said, adding Texas had prob­lems on both sides of the ball. “I think every­body under­stands where we are … When you play a team that good, it exposes your weaknesses.”

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