Texas' Quinn Ewers Talks Clemson CFP Matchup, Playing in SEC, More in B/R Interview

Perhaps the best part of the new 12-team College Football Playoff for fans is the environments it will create with the first-round games being played on campus.

“It’s going to be awesome,” Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers told Bleacher Report. “We’ve never experienced this and DKR has never experienced this. It’s going to be rocking for a playoff game with a lot at stake. I’m just excited to get on that field again.”

While Ewers and the Longhorns surely wanted the SEC championship and first-round bye that would have come with a victory over Georgia in the conference title game, landing the No. 5 seed and a first-round game at Darrell K Royal Texas Memorial Stadium is quite the consolation prize.

It’s not a stretch to suggest Texas has one of the clearest paths to the semifinals of anyone in the field, as it will face 12th-seeded Clemson at home in the first round before a potential showdown against fourth-seeded Arizona State at the Peach Bowl in the quarterfinals.

The Peach Bowl is in Atlanta, which is far from Arizona State’s campus and right in the middle of SEC territory. That could give the Longhorns yet another advantage when it comes to the crowd.

But the focus is on Dabo Swinney’s Clemson program first.

“They’ve also been in a ton of big games, and they play really hard for their coach,” Ewers said. “They’re really well coached and disciplined players. It’s also cool I get to play against one of my really good friends from high school who went to Southlake with me. R.J. Mickens, who plays safety for them. It’s going to be a cool moment and experience with him for sure.”

Mickens is a talented playmaker at the back end of the Tigers’ defense, but Ewers joked he might have to “rub it in a little bit” if he beats his friend over the top with a deep ball during the playoff game.

Texas is the better seed and the favorite in the game, but it is Clemson coming in with momentum.

The Tigers wouldn’t have even made the CFP without shocking SMU in the ACC Championship Game with a 56-yard field goal from Nolan Hauser as time expired. That stood in stark contrast to the Longhorns, who lost in overtime to Georgia with the SEC title on the line on the same day.

Fortunately for Texas fans, head coach Steve Sarkisian’s program has been defined by its ability to bounce back this year.

“We’ve been through a lot of adversity, and I think the culture that Coach Sark has built thrives on overcoming it,” Ewers said. “It’s 10 percent what happens and 90 percent how you react to what happened. We truly live by that. Sure, we’ll get hit in the mouth a couple times, but we’re never going to go away.”

Nobody has demonstrated that resiliency inside the program better than Ewers this season.

The signal-caller missed time with an oblique injury, was temporarily benched for Arch Manning during the regular-season loss to Georgia and even had to deal with a false report suggesting he was going to sit out for the season’s stretch run to focus on the NFL draft.

What’s more, there is constant noise about the quarterback room given Manning’s status as the nephew of NFL legends Peyton and Eli Manning and as the No. 1 overall recruit of the 2023 class, per 247Sports’ composite rankings.

While the Longhorns occasionally use Manning as a change-of-pace option for running plays, this is Ewers’ team going into the playoff after he responded to the Georgia loss by spearheading a five-game winning streak with 13 touchdown passes to just three interceptions during that span.

He led his team to wins over dangerous Vanderbilt, Florida, Arkansas and Kentucky squads, as well as an important road win over rival Texas A&M in the first game between the two schools since 2011.

“I always say that the sign of the true character of a man is in the face of adversity, and that was a lot of adversity for him, a lot of adversity for us as a team coming off last week’s game,” Sarkisian said of Ewers after the Vanderbilt win following the Georgia loss in October. “I think the way he responded was kind of indicative of how we responded as a team.”

As Ewers was responding as a leader on the field, he also partnered with C4 Energy off it and even got to meet and greet with fans who entered the company’s sweepstakes in September.

“It’s been great,” he said of the partnership. “What made me want to work with them is all the sponsorships they’ve done for athletes around me. Obviously they did one with Bijan [Robinson]. Our core values also align, and their headquarters are also in Austin. It’s been awesome working with them.”

Ewers said his favorite flavor is strawberry guava while highlighting that “whether I’m going to class or going to the gym to get a workout in, it gives me a boost.”

Texas needed that boost for the 2024 season, as it moved from the Big 12 to the SEC as part of a larger conference realignment shift that also included the rival Sooners joining the league.

While the Longhorns didn’t have the most challenging schedule by SEC terms since it avoided Alabama, Tennessee, Ole Miss, LSU and Missouri, they still sent a message with a 34-3 blowout win over Oklahoma and defeated Texas A&M.

Those are the types of rivalry games Texas quarterbacks are remembered for, and Ewers made sure it was his team with regional bragging rights in the first year in the new conference.

That’s not to say there weren’t welcome to the SEC moments considering the Longhorns lost to Georgia twice. But they showed improvement from the 30-15 regular-season loss to the overtime defeat in the SEC Championship Game and surely hope being battle-tested in the SEC will pay dividends against teams from other conferences in the playoff.

“I always wanted to play in the SEC and be a part of it,” Ewers said. “We got a taste of that when we went to Bama last year. It was cool to play a full SEC schedule. Man, if you don’t show up in the SEC, you’re going to get beat. And I think this year was a year that showed that. The Big 12 was fun for sure, but it’s not the same as the SEC. In the SEC, it’s all about football.”

Now he will look to deliver his new conference a national championship in the first year of the 12-team CFP field.