Texas Longhorns: Mack Brown Must Make a Decision on a Starting Quarterback

By David Blum
Featured CFB Writer

Once again, Texas is loaded.

Manny Diaz’s defense potentially features three first round picks and has led the Big 12 in virtually every major category for four years straight.  

Malcolm Brown and Joe Bergeron were fantastic as freshman before injuries, and a young offensive line grew up as the season went along.

Freshman Jonathan Gray, if he is even half the talent his high school career suggests, could be the most electric newcomer in the country. And the receiving group isn’t half bad either – Jaxon Shipley, Mike Davis and Marquise Goodwin are as solid a group as any in the Big 12.

Unfortunately, most of this was the case last season, when Texas limped to an 8-5 finish. The Holiday Bowl victory over an average Cal Bears team was encouraging if only for the performance of true freshman quarterback David Ash, who appeared to have finally, inexorably, seized control of the starting job. For most of the season, the carousel between Ash and Case McCoy proved the old sang true, “if you have two quarterbacks, you have none.”

Now, after Ash had reportedly taken most of the snaps with the starting group throughout spring and fall camp, Mack Brown told the Austin-American Statesman’s Kirk Bohls on Tuesday something that no Texas fan wants to hear at this point: “The staff has reached a consensus that both David Ash and Case McCoy are capable of winning football games this year.”

Ash is the more physically gifted of the two, standing 6’3″ and outweighing McCoy by a good 20 pounds.

However, McCoy has a huge edge in terms of on-field confidence; like his older brother, Colt McCoy, he gives off an aura of swagger that seems to rub off on his teammates. Before the catastrophe of Garrett Gilbert’s benching, injury and subsequent transfer, the plan (allegedly) had been to redshirt Ash and keep McCoy as Gilbert’s backup.

A true freshman from tiny Belton, Texas, Ash was supposed to be a developmental project, but McCoy’s struggles against Oklahoma, after Gilbert had already announced he was undergoing season-ending shoulder surgery, forced Ash into the fire.

Unfortunately for the 2011 incarnation of the Longhorns, Ash didn’t progress as the season went along. After injuries knocked out Brown, Bergeron and Fozzy Whittaker, Ash’s struggles could no longer be ignored and he was replaced by McCoy against Kansas State.

McCoy almost led a comeback against the Wildcats, then beat rival Texas A&M before tossing five interceptions against one of the worst defenses in the country in a 48-24 thrashing in Waco against Baylor.

Ash started against Cal and had, statistically, his best game of  the season: 14 of 23, 142 yards, one touchdown pass and one touchdown reception. Perhaps most encouragingly, his yards-per-attempt was 6.2, a big increase over games like Kansas State where he averaged a paltry 2.4.

Texas was a better, more talented team than their 8-5 record indicated in 2011. It’s arguable, due to the performance of the Longhorn defense throughout the season, that the team was some average quarterback play away from being 11-2 or even 12-1.

In 2012, the team has higher aspirations than a Holiday Bowl victory. A preseason top-20 ranking, preseason first-team All-Americans dotting the defense, and the healthy return of Brown and Bergeron joining Gray in the backfield, has Texas in position to potentially win the new-look Big 12.

Oklahoma will be Oklahoma, a top-10 team that will likely suffer an inexplicable road loss. Oklahoma State, last year’s conference champion, is starting a true freshman at quarterback but otherwise returns a majority of their starters.

West Virginia was last seen hanging 70 points on ACC Champion Clemson in the Sugar Bowl and possesses, on paper, the conference’s strongest offense. Bill Snyder will probably be able to ferret out some more JUCO gems and make Kansas State competitive again, while its difficult to predict what will happen with Baylor, Iowa State and TCU.

Texas opens the season with a soft non-conference schedule, with home games against Wyoming and New Mexico followed by a road-trip to SEC doormat Ole Miss. But things escalate very quickly after that, with a three-game stretch at Oklahoma State, at home against West Virginia and then against Oklahoma in Dallas.

If the Longhorns are going to reach their potential this season, they must have their quarterback situation figured out by that Sept. 29 game in Stillwater. Brown and offensive coordinators Bryan Harsin and Major Applewhite must come to a decision, not only for the team’s sake but for the quarterbacks as well.

Not every freshman is Colt McCoy or Sam Bradford, setting school and conference records in their first year on campus. However, the difference between those players and Ash or even McCoy is that they were the unquestioned starters, regardless of any on-field struggles they may have had.

One wonders if they felt jaded by allowing Gilbert to struggle through a 5-7 2010 campaign that completely destroyed his confidence for 2011, but they should have made a choice and stuck with it regardless. The soft-spoken Ash allegedly had a tough time connecting with teammates last season, and the coaches made it harder for them to get behind him by having the threat of McCoy hanging over him at all times.

But its their own fault, and Brown and his staff aren’t paid as much as they are to make excuses. They’re paid to get results on the field, to get wins. And their handling of the Texas quarterback situation the past two seasons has been the exact opposite of the way they should be going about to do that.

Regardless of the rumored internal political struggles around McCoy, Ash’s struggles to connect with his teammates or a desire to not tip their hand, Brown and the staff must have a bona fide, full-time starting QB by Sept. 29.

Otherwise, Texas is probably doomed to waste yet another year of prodigious talent on a mediocre record.

Follow David on Twitter: @TWT_DavidB