Washington Huskies player’s explanation ‘defends’ Texas QB Quinn Ewers’ final pass (kinda)

In real time, the pass had a chance and maybe Texas wins the Sugar Bowl, but the Washington defensive back made a play.

Upon further review, and you have a chance to look at that replay, again and again and again, Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers’ final pass in the 2023 Sugar Bowl against Washington should have tied the game with no time on the clock.

Texas kicks the extra point. Texas wins by one. Texas advances to Houston to play No. 1 Michigan on Monday night in the national title game. ESPN throws a party, and invites Pat McAfee. The price of the tickets on the secondary market spike to Jupiter.

That Texas even had that chance on the game’s final play required a series of events that a fleet of Hollywood executives would reject as “too dumb to believe.”

In the immediate seconds, minutes, hours, and now days since No. 2 Washington upset Texas in New Orleans in the national semifinals, the criticism of Ewers’ final pass was that it needed to be flat. Had he thrown a line drive from the Washington 13-yard line towards receiver Adonai Mitchell, the game-tying touchdown was there.

Instead, Ewers put some air under the ball; both Mitchell and Washington defensive back Elijah Jackson jumped for it, and he batted the ball away. Game over.

To complete the always fun, torturous game of “What If,” I asked Jackson this question on Saturday, during the college football championship game media day: “Had Ewers thrown a low, line-drive pass, would Mitchell would have been in the position to catch it?”

Jackson’s answer is a soft defense of Ewers. It’s not a yes. It’s not a no.

“I feel like there are a lot things in football that could happen,” Jackson said. “Someone could have jumped five feet higher, ran a little bit faster and not gotten tackled. There are a lot of ‘What ifs,’ and ‘Could have been’, but what happened happened, and that’s life.”

Watch the play again, and you will see that Washington defensive tackle Jayvon Parker is one step away from hitting Ewers before he released the ball.

That rush disrupted Ewers; was it enough to change how Ewers wanted to throw the ball? Doesn’t look like it, but it does appear that Ewers would not have been able to drive off his back leg, if he had preferred to throw a strike rather than loft the ball.

Ideally, Ewers moves to his left and throws pass towards the pylon, where Mitchell can catch it in the end zone. Jackson was lined up 9 yards off the line of scrimmage, but considering the play started he wasn’t going to retreat much more.

The other part to this play that left the angry Horns red rather than orange was the apparent pass interference Jackson committed on Mitchell.

Replays showed Jackson’s left hand on Mitchell’s left shoulder as he swatted the ball away. In this day and age of football, where everything and nothing are penalties on the same play, in the split seconds after Jackson swatted the ball away everyone was waiting to see if the official would throw his flag.

He didn’t, which was the right call.

“I thought it was very, very clean,” Jackson said. “But, at the same time, in football if the ref don’t call it, it didn’t happen. If the refs call the (pass interference) and I thought it wasn’t a PI, it’s a PI. That’s football.”

Which, ultimately, is what happened to Ewers, and Texas against Washington.

Texas needed a miracle to even be in the position for Ewers to throw a pass from the 13-yard line on the game’s final play with a chance to tie the game.

In real time, he made a clean pass and Elijah Jackson simply made the play.

Only until we slow it down and go over every split second does it look so obvious that Ewers needed to throw a better ball.