Austin, TX

Texas football: Quinn Ewers enters 2025 NFL draft

Published

1 year ago

January 15, 2025

Press Room

Texas football: Quinn Ewers enters 2025 NFL draft

After three years with the Texas football team, quarterback Quinn Ewers is moving on.

On Wednesday, Ewers announced that he is declaring for the 2025 NFL draft. The decision became public in a video posted to his Instagram and X accounts.

Pro Football Focus currently rates Ewers as the No. 7 quarterback in the 2025 draft class.

The decision by Ewers to leave Texas for the NFL is hardly a surprise. Ewers considered entering the NFL draft after the 2023 season but opted to return to school for another year. Despite a report that he had been offered $6 million to enter the transfer portal and exhaust his eligibility elsewhere, Ewers also recently told ESPN that the did not expect to play college football during the 2025 season.

So all Wednesday’s news did was officially close a chapter for both Ewers and Texas. After skipping his senior year of high school and spending a semester at Ohio State, Ewers announced on Dec. 12, 2021 that he would transfer to Texas. He won the starting job ahead of the 2022 season and remained the Longhorns’ starter through last week’s 28-14 loss to Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl on Jan. 10.

Over 36 starts, Ewers completed just under 65% of his passes while throwing for 9,128 yards and 68 touchdowns. He led Texas to a 27-9 record, the 2023 Big 12 championship and two appearances in the College Football Playoff semifinals.

Among his memorable performances were a four-touchdown outburst against Oklahoma in 2022, a 349-yard, three-touchdown game at Alabama in 2023, a 452-yard, four-touchdown performance in the 2023 Big 12 championship game and a three-touchdown effort at Michigan this past September. Against Arizona State in the quarterfinal round of the 2024 College Football Playoff, Ewers threw for 322 yards and completed a 4th-and-13 pass that kept UT’s season alive.

Ewers, however, never fully lived up to the hype associated with being rated as a perfect prospect in a 2021 recruiting class that also included future first-round picks Caleb Williams, J.J. McCarthy and Drake Maye. Injuries cost Ewers multiple games in each of his seasons at Texas, and fans and media members alike spent much of the past two seasons speculating over what the UT offense would look like with his backup, Arch Manning, under center. Texas is also still searching for its first national championship since 2005.

Still, Ewers leaves Texas with the third-most touchdown passes and third-most passing yards in school history. Colt McCoy, Vince Young and Bobby Layne, who all have had their numbers retired by Texas, are the only quarterbacks who won more games with the Longhorns.

“I’m super proud of Quinn. He’s taught me a lot, probably unknowingly to him, because what he went through every year dealing with injury, what he goes through where I don’t know if he’d ever live up to the standards of what everybody thinks he’s supposed to be,” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said after the Cotton Bowl. “But at the end of the day, all he did was show up every day and work and be a great leader and be a great teammate. And that’s a real credit to him because human nature, in this day and age, is to look at Twitter, to look at Instagram, to look at social media and articles written and fan boards and whatever else. And you can ride that emotional roller coaster of whatever you think public opinion could be, and that could be the opinion of one or a hundred or whatever.

“But this guy never did that. All he did was come to work every day. All he did was be a great teammate. All he did was work on his craft, get himself as healthy as he could when he was injured, and then show up when it was time to show up.”

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Austin, TX

Will the rest of Austin allergies seasons be as bad as cedar this year?

Published

1 hour ago

March 4, 2026

Press Room

Will the rest of Austin allergies seasons be as bad as cedar this year?

Austin had a particularly itchy and drippy cedar fever season to start the year. Many winter days, from late December into February, had high or very high ashe juniper (aka cedar) pollen counts.

Central Texas has a year-round allergy season with mold popping up at any time. For the more traditional spring and fall allergy seasons, forecasters at AccuWeather are predicting some of the allergens across the country will be worse this year than average.

Texas, though, is a different story.

For grass allergies, which happen now through September, AccuWeather estimates Austin will have an average season. However, just west of the Interstate 35 corridor in the Hill Country to almost El Paso, that season is expected to be worse than normal.

“Texas may experience above-average grass pollen for a few weeks,” AccuWeather’s allergy report said, “though the season could be shorter-lived compared to northern areas.”

It all depends on the weather

How much rain we get in the next six months and the perennial Texas heat will all affect the growing season for grasses and weeds, as well as the amount of pollen trees produce. The Farmers’ Almanac and the Old Farmers Almanac are both predicting a wetter and warmer spring.

Rain helps plants grow, which can increase pollen production over time. However, rainfall during allergy season can also bring temporary relief by washing pollen out of the air. That’s what we’re expecting this weekend, with our first meaningful rain chance in nearly three weeks. Tree and weed pollen levels might briefly drop, but mold could spike because it thrives in damp, humid weather.

If spring continues with excessive heat like we saw in February, it could limit the growth of some plants and trees. Extreme heat can reduce how much they grow, and how much pollen they produce. On the other hand, if we get a healthy balance of rain and only slightly above-normal temperatures — not extreme heat — pollen counts could climb. That’s especially true as we head into April, typically our windiest month of the year, which helps spread pollen more easily.

How can you treat allergies in Austin?

If you are feeling the effects of allergies, here are some things you can do to lessen them:

Start taking allergy medication at least two weeks before your allergen’s season is supposed to start. Keep taking your allergy medication throughout your allergen’s season, even on low-pollen days.
Vary your allergy medication. You can take a nasal spray, an eye drop and an oral antihistamine at the same time to treat the different symptoms. If one kind of allergy medication isn’t working, consult your doctor about whether you should add a second one or switch out the medication.
Take a shower before going to bed.
Take off outside clothes or shoes when you get into the house.
Do a daily nasal wash such as a neti pot or saline spray.
Consider seeing an allergist to get drops or shots to lessen your reaction to the allergen.

Consider these household tips to improve your chances of keeping allergens away:

Change the filters in your house regularly during cedar fever season.
Vacuum and sweep regularly.
Change your sheets, especially your pillow regularly.
Keep doors and windows closed.
Clean out the vents in your home.
Have your home tested for indoor allergens such as mold.
Wash and brush the animals in your house to lessen the amount of allergens in the air.
Wear a mask outside or inside while you are trying to lessen the pollen or mold indoors.

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Austin, TX

Texas Primary: Breakdown of Texas races

Published

13 hours ago

March 4, 2026

Press Room

Democrats tried to stop a mid-decade redistricting effort, but were unsuccessful. Now, we are starting to see some of the candidates emerging in those newly drawn districts. FOX 7 Austin’s Rudy Koski gives a full breakdown.

Posted March 3, 2026 10:32pm CST

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Austin, TX

Remembering Jorge Pederson: Minnesota MMA fighter killed in Austin, Texas, shooting

Published

1 day ago

March 3, 2026

Press Room

Remembering Jorge Pederson: Minnesota MMA fighter killed in Austin, Texas, shooting

ROCHESTER, Minn. (KTTC) – A shooting on West Sixth Street in Austin, Texas, early Sunday morning, killed three people and injured more than a dozen others, according to the Austin Police Department. APD confirmed one of the victims was 30-year-old Jorge Pederson, a Minnesota man who worked as an MMA fighter for the Med City Fighting Championships.

“You meet tons of fighters and there are people that stand above the rest that you find you enjoy or find the most amusing,” MCFC Co-Owner Matthew Vogt said. “He was definitely one of them.”

According to Vogt, Pederson was also the owner of a Minnesota business called Metro Movers. Vogt said the MMA competitor touched everyone’s hearts since his first day of fighting professionally in Rochester.

“As soon as we met him when it was the weighing time, we just loved the guy already because he had a great mission or spirit about him,” Vogt said. “He was a funny guy and great fighter.”

Vogt told KTTC when he first saw the news that Pederson was killed, he could not believe what he saw.

“I was looking, like, ‘Wait a minute. Is this one of his shenanigans or did something actually happen there?’” Vogt said, recalling the moment he saw a social media post regarding the shooting in Austin. “I confirmed with a few people and I’m just like, sometimes, some things happen that you don’t even like, you don’t even know how to respond to it because it’s just so out of left field that you don’t immediately have a response to it.”

MCFC confirmed there is an online fundraiser dedicated to supporting Pederson’s family. As of Tuesday afternoon, more than $10,000 has been raised.

“He was someone that always could make anybody laugh,” Vogt said. “Support his family through the fundraiser and take a look at his Instagram especially to see how funny he was.”

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