Hudson Card, Quinn Ewers still splitting QB practice reps this week

In just a few days, Texas football will kick off the festivities for the Red River Rivalry game against the Oklahoma Sooners at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. Texas and head coach Steve Sarkisian are still dealing with some questions at quarterback before gameday, though.

The question for Sark and the Longhorns remains whether it will be redshirt freshman quarterback Quinn Ewers or junior Hudson Card that gets the start against Oklahoma this weekend. Early this week, it certainly sounded like the momentum was trending in favor of Ewers making his first start in the last four weeks.

Ewers originally suffered a sprained clavicle on his non-throwing shoulder on Sep. 10 against the Alabama Crimson Tide. He’s continued to work his way back since then with no apparent setbacks that we know of during his recovery process.

In the meantime, Card has started three consecutive games in place of the injured Ewers. Card had the best game of his career last weekend in Texas’ convincing 38-20 win at home over the West Virginia Mountaineers. He threw for more than 300 yards, along with three passing touchdowns, and no interceptions against the Mountaineers.

Moreover, Sark remained unforthcoming with regard to providing any sort of specific update on the starting quarterback for Red River during his press conference on Oct. 3. He did note that the quarterback is essentially the healthiest it’s been since Week 1, which is obviously good to hear.

There was an update that came courtesy of Chip Brown of Horns247 on Oct. 5 (paid content) noting that Ewers and Card split reps in practice on Oct. 4. This is the same situation that we had last week in practice with Ewers and Card splitting the practice reps.

In terms of how this impacts the quarterback decision, I don’t think you can read into the splitting of the practice reps too much ahead of Red River this weekend.

Texas football QBs Hudson Card and Quinn Ewers still splitting practice reps early this week

If Sark’s actions the last few weeks regarding the quarterback situation are any indication, we might not know who the starting quarterback will be until Friday or Saturday.

Josh Pate of “The Late Kick” stated this week that “we think Quinn Ewers is going to start for Texas”. Pate didn’t really mention why he thinks that in this Red River preview, so I don’t know how relevant this will be.

We will continue to follow any injury updates that come about regarding the Texas and/or the OU quarterback rooms for the rest of the week leading up to Red River on Oct. 8.

Oklahoma is facing an injury problem of its own in the quarterback room after redshirt junior Dillon Gabriel suffered an apparent concussion in the loss to the TCU Horned Frogs on Oct. 1. As of Venables’ last press conference on Oct. 4, we don’t have any concrete updates yet regarding OU’s quarterback situation.

Texas is sporting a record of 3-2 (1-1 Big 12) following the 18-point win at home over West Virginia on Oct. 1. Texas and Oklahoma will kick off at 11 a.m. CT on Oct. 8 at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas for this year’s edition of the Red River Rivalry game.