Texas lets Maalik Murphy ‘go play,’ and fill-in QB produces vs. BYU
With Ewers week-to-week with a shoulder injury suffered last week against Houston, Sarkisian scripted eight of the first 10 plays as passes for Murphy, with another lateral to Savion Red and just one true running play. Murphy played the entire game, going 16-of-25 for 170 yards and two touchdowns.
Sarkisian harked back to his own playing days as BYU’s quarterback on his thinking.
“Sometimes the best way to get rid of any of the jitters that a guy might have is let him go play,” Sarkisian said. “When I was a quarterback, my first time I went out there, give me some throws. Don’t make me wait until it’s third-and-9 and now I have to throw it to try to make a play.”
Murphy was loose, dancing before the game. He said Texas coaches told him, “Don’t change, be me,” and said Sarkisian’s confidence was a boost.
“He believed in me if he’s able to script that many openers as passes for me in my first start,” Murphy said. “That kind of just tells me something, that he’s not letting off the gas and he believes in my ability. So that was huge.”
One of those early passes was intercepted, with Murphy coming under pressure and floating a ball to the right flat that fell right into the arms of BYU’s Crew Wakley.
“It was a young mistake on my part, putting the ball in harm’s way,” Murphy said. “But I was able to bounce back, and the team bounced back with me.”
Sarkisian said he was impressed with Murphy’s composure, noting there was a miscommunication on the play with a receiver and pointed to another turnover later, when the quarterback was hit and lost a fumble.
“Both turnovers were, quite frankly, unfortunate for him,” Sarkisian said. “Some of the growing pains as a quarterback is sometimes you’ve got to eat the ball and take the sack and not just kind of try to throw it especially when you’re getting hit. … We’ve got to execute better around him, but the way that he responded from both of those two turnovers, I thought was great.”
Twice in the third quarter, the Longhorns were stopped on downs inside the BYU 5, a recurring theme with them this year. Despite the Longhorns scoring 30 or more points in each of their first eight games in a season for the first time in school history, Sarkisian admitted that it’s an issue plaguing his offense right now.
“I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you there’s a level of frustration as it pertains to that,” he said. “And we’ve got to continue to dig deep into that.”
But the Longhorns’ defense created havoc all day, and Texas was never in danger of losing the lead.
Sarkisian also said some of the offense’s struggles meant he couldn’t find the right time to find a spot for star freshman recruit Arch Manning to make his first appearance for Texas.
“We weren’t into the flow that I would have liked,” Sarkisian said. “Maybe we could have punched a couple of those drives in where we got stopped inside the 5. But we didn’t. So to me it was about making sure we have enough rhythm with Maalik in there. I just felt like it just wasn’t the right time today.”
Sarkisian ended with praise for Murphy, who committed to Texas before Ewers transferred from Ohio State and rehabbed an ankle injury suffered in the state championship game last season prior to Manning arriving this year.
“He didn’t stay because of NIL,” Sarkisian said. “When I had my exit meeting [last season], he didn’t bring up one thing about NIL. He stayed because he wanted to be part of this team. And he just wanted to make sure he had an opportunity to compete. That’s what makes him special.”