‘The hay is never in the barn’: Texas QB Sam Ehlinger confronts doubters, NFL questions head-on in draft prep
FORT WORTH, Texas — The question came among the slew that NFL draft prospects inevitably receive, this time from one of the league’s 32 general managers.
“He was asking me why his head coach was telling the GM to go get me,” Sam Ehlinger told USA TODAY Sports last Thursday from the APEC gym where he has trained for the NFL draft.
Why, the general manager asked the Longhorns quarterback, did the head coach so appreciate Ehlinger’s style of play?
“I think it’s the combination of emotion and intelligence,” Ehlinger said he told the general manager. “From truly being an emotional leader and being an operator of the offense, and then also having the football intelligence to be able to understand defenses and understand your offense at a high level.”
The GM quipped: “Did you script that?”
Ehlinger promised he didn’t.
After 43 starts for Texas the last four seasons, Ehlinger is a prospect about whom league evaluators simultaneously know much and yet have plenty to predict.
It’s a paradox that befits a 22-year-old who transitions with almost uncanny fluidity from a smile reminding coaches of the cartoon strip “Calvin and Hobbes” to a glare that signals intense immersion into the task at hand.
“He has that Opie Taylor Boy Scout look,” Ehlinger’s quarterbacks coach Jeff Christensen told USA TODAY Sports. “But inside, he’s a vicious, vicious competitor.”
That competitor in Ehlinger makes clear: He desires and believes he is capable of becoming an eventual NFL starter. But he’s realistic about the ground he’ll likely be expected to cover before attaining that goal.
Which leads Ehlinger back to a family-favorite “control what you can control” mantra, a work ethic teammates study to mirror and a relentlessness that warrants fellow Longhorn NFL prospects labeling him as the physically and mentally toughest member of their college team.
“I love his competitiveness,” said ESPN draft analyst Todd McShay, who projects Ehlinger as a “late-round, probably Day 3” selection. “He can run, he’s got great pocket presence, he’s physical, he’s tough. He takes care of the football.
“But what he’s got to do is get with someone who can actually help improve his consistency with his deep-ball accuracy and his overall accuracy as a quarterback.”
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