Pete Thamel, ESPNJan 11, 2024, 12:18 PM ET
Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers announced on social media Thursday that he’s returning to the Longhorns for his senior year of college.
Ewers led Texas to the College Football Playoff last season, putting together a prolific season that showed why he entered college as one of the country’s most coveted recruits.
Ewers’ return will give Texas one of the faces of the sport next season, as Ewers will be among college football’s most recognizable names. The return will help him compete for the top quarterback spot in the 2024 draft, as he and Georgia’s Carson Beck are the two players certain to return who project to have the most buzz.
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Ewers finished with 22 touchdown passes and six interceptions this season, including throwing for 349 yards and three touchdowns in a win at Alabama. Overall, he finished No. 2 in the Big 12 with 3,479 yards and a 69.0-percent completion percentage. The yardage totals came despite missing a pair of games because of injury.
Ewers’s development this season came through in his clutch play, as he completed 76% of his passes and threw 6 TD to zero interceptions in the fourth quarter of games, per ESPN Stats & Info.
Ewers also began to push the ball downfield with more efficiency last year. In 2022, only 53% of those passes of 10 yards or more down the field were deemed catchable. This past season, that mark jumped up to 75%, per ESPN Stats & Info.
Ewers made his announcement in a video on Instagram. He told ESPN: “One more year with my teammates and one more year of development with Coach Sark made the most sense.”
The decision does not come as a huge surprise. Ewers’ camp had indicated late in the season that they preferred Ewers to stay, as another year of development under coach Steve Sarkisian would benefit him the most long-term.
Ewers, 20, left high school after his junior season to enroll at Ohio State, and another year of physical growth and surpassing the 25-start mark was viewed as a positive heading to the NFL.
Ewers told ESPN he hopes to “grow as a leader and win more games” in 2024. He’s 16-6 as a starter
Ewers also knows there’s a chance to leave a vast legacy at Texas.
“I want to be the quarterback who worked every year to get better,” he said. “The quarterback who loved his teammates, the quarterback who won a lot of football games and brought Texas football back to the top of college football where it belongs.”
2024-01-11 17:18:00
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