Longhorns Coach Steve Sarkisian Details Plan in Final Seconds of Sugar Bowl Loss
NEW ORLEANS -- Somehow, someway, the Texas Longhorns had a chance to punch their ticket to the National Championship in the final seconds of Monday night's College Football Playoff meeting with Washington Huskies at the Sugar Bowl after it had looked like all hope was lost just a few minutes prior.
After trailing 37-28 with 1:10 to play, the Longhorns still found a way to get themselves in position to win the game at Washington's 13-yard line despite ESPN's Analytics giving the Huskies a 99.9 percent chance to win with 1:02 left.
But three straight incompletions from quarterback Quinn Ewers in the final 10 seconds marked a sour end to the Longhorns' season, as a gift-wrapped chance slipped through their hands in a 37-31 loss.
Texas fans will likely question the play-calling and execution in those final seconds, something that Longhorns coach Steve Sarkisian and Ewers were both asked about right at the start of the postgame press conference.
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One of the more head-scratching plays was a swing pass with 15 seconds left to running back Jaydon Blue, who lost a yard on the play after going out of bounds but wasted five valuable seconds while moving Texas back to the 13-yard line.
Sarkisian went into detail about this play and the final sequence as a whole.
"Yeah he was more of a check down on the play," Sarkisian said of the swing pass to Blue. "We were looking for an opportunity for JT (Ja'Tavion Sanders) or J Whitt (Jordan Whittington). We're trying to create a one-on-one matchup for those guys to go high-point it. Naturally, they did a good job defending it and Quinn did a good job of just getting the ball out to Blue with a chance in space but had to get out of bounds.
"It's a tricky situation in that you're out of timeouts. And so we have to be very careful that we don't complete a ball short on the goal line or pretty much the game is going to end at that point. So when you're forced to throw it into the endzone each time, it makes it difficult especially when they're defending the endzone. So we were just trying to create some matchups with some different route combinations to create some one-on-ones and to give our play-makers a chance to make a play and we just weren't quite able to do it. So that's the way it goes sometimes."
Ewers started slow, but got going in the second half, and was a reason the Longhorns had a chance to win late in the first place. However, his final pass attempt to Adonai Mitchell was batted down as the last second ticked off the clock. Mitchell, who caught a one-yard touchdown earlier in the fourth quarter to keep Texas alive, was the intended target on three incompletions in the end zone on the final drive.
"We're trying to take a shot at the end zone, obviously if it falls short the game's gonna be over," Ewers said. "I was looking to give my guys an opportunity to go make a play at the end of the day."
The Longhorns close out the season with disappointment of what could've been on that final drive, a sequence Texas fans will likely be thinking about all offseason.
