3 important players to watch in Texas football’s second fall scrimmage

Hudson Card, QB

While there are certainly some important position battles that still need to play out on the two-deep on both sides of the ball in this weekend’s scrimmage, all eyes will be on the quarterback competition. Junior Hudson Card and redshirt freshman Quinn Ewers are still technically duking it out to see who will win the starting job for Week 1 against ULM.

Despite Sark not naming a starting quarterback yet, it sounds like he is getting very close to announcing his decision. And most of the momentum at the moment is sitting with Card over Ewers.

In fact, it sounds like Card is roughly one solid scrimmage away from locking down the starting job, at least for the opener on Sep. 3.

It’s necessary to see Card show that he can effectively manage this offense while making some of the more difficult throws when there’s pressure coming his way. Card’s downfall last season had to do with his ability to manage a collapsing pocket while keeping his eyes downfield. At times, he would get happy feet and make nothing out of something.

Most important, though, we will need to see Card minimize turnovers. While Ewers definitely has tossed more picks in fall camp thus far, Card wasn’t perfect either.

If a turnover fest takes place between both Card and Ewers this weekend, that will be another bad sign of the standing of the quarterback competition coming out of the second scrimmage. But I’ll keep my faith in Sark’s decision-making here, as Card has looked better in most phases of camp at the quarterback position thus far.

We could very well see Card coming out of the second scrimmage winning the starting quarterback job for the second year in a row if Sark announces his decision by early next week. The main question for Card will be whether he can hang onto the starting job through the end of Week 2, which was his downfall last season after the bad loss on the road to the Arkansas Razorbacks.