The Texas Longhorns lost the Sugar Bowl last night in a game where they never once held the lead. But despite having a chance to win the game at the very end of regulation, they couldn’t finish and Joel Klatt thinks he knows why.
On the latest edition of The Joel Klatt Show, the Fox Sports commentator said that Texas simply fell apart at the end of the game. He identified that final sequence of plays in the redzone starting with the controversial first down play.
“And then you get the last sequence and Texas falls apart completely, Quinn Ewers fell apart completely n the last few plays,” Klatt said. “One, you cannot throw a swing route on first down with 15 seconds left. Like I don’t know what that was. Second down, he basically threw out of the back of the endzone. Third down, you get pressure, I guess that’s a smart play, gets it off and lives to fight another down.
“And then on fourth down, he basically throws it out of the endzone again. Quarterbacks: 100-percent of the passes that you throw out of bounds are going to be incomplete. I know that’s shocking. I know that’s shocking. 60-percent of the time it works every time.”
It was a playcalling sequence that earned Texas head coach and de facto playcaller Steve Sarkisian tons of criticism and will likely haunt him for the rest of his coaching tenure.
Getting back to the College Football Playoff is going to be a lot harder once they join the more challenging Southeastern Conference next year.