Before Arch Manning took the QB1 baton from Quinn Ewers, before Quinn Ewers left for the NFL draft, and even before the season ended. Ewers came inches close to seeing his dream of winning the national championship. He was sacked and halted on 4th down goal play against Ohio State in the playoffs. His eyes still seemed unfazed, the love for the Longhorns still strong in his heart, the desire to lead Longhorns still burning hot.

But every chapter comes to an end, and his story with Texas has now ended. He could have played one more year at Texas, but he chose not to step on Arch Manning’s toes. He declared his love for the Longhorns as he turned down an $8 million opportunity from another major college rival to go to the NFL. His high school coach said, “Texas was the only place he wanted to play college football. He wanted to leave Texas in good standing.” Quinn Ewers said in a recent statement about the NIL opportunities at Texas and the reason why it continuously motivated him.

“I mean, it was definitely cool, that’s for sure. To be able to get paid throughout college. You know, I think everybody deserves it—the amount of work that we put in through the entire year because it’s a 12-month process for us, and we got to school after. I think the school makes a lot of money off of what we do. So for us to be able to make a little bit of money off that too. I think it was really cool. Obviously, it was the reason I loved my senior year.”. Surely, Texas has also reciprocated their love for Ewers quite generously, as he earned close to $6 million in Texas for his playing years. He surely deserved all of that.

After all, Ewers led the Longhorns to back-to-back playoffs. His stats at 65.8% pass completion rate in 2024 for 3,472 yards and 69% pass completion rate for 3,479 yards are still quite decent and don’t quite provide the full picture. Steve Sarkisian heavily relied upon rushing play combos in his RPO schemes. So that may have a bearing on his stats. But the question now is: where is he headed in the draft?

Before going into that, we saw Ewers throwing during the Combine, and it seems he threw quite well in it, too. He was particularly excellent, as he delivered accurate short and medium-depth passes. However, he did struggle slightly on long-range passes. Steve Sarkisian spoke of the player’s abilities as he was present in the Combine. “[Quinn] can throw darts. I’m looking forward to seeing him hit every target today. I thought his deep ball dramatically improved over three years.” So, that still seems an improvement on his earlier throws, where we saw in earlier seasons that he had problems. But what about his draft prospects?

Does Quinn Ewers’s meeting with Mike Tomlin mean a draft deal?

Well, Quinn Ewers is not very highly rated to be the first or second-round draft pick for teams. Still, he is turning heads with his interviews and performances in the Combine continuously, and we may see a sharp rise in his draft stock. Take, for example, his recent hilarious banter with Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin.

We all know the type of guy Tomlin is, and sometimes his opinions can be quite hilarious, too. Ewers, when asked about his meeting with the head coach, smirked slyly. “It was funny, we started talking about my major. It’s like what Cardale Jones said, you know — we didn’t go college to play school,” Ewers said. “But, no, it was good getting to talk to him.” 

The head coach had asked about his GPA in his interview. Naturally, this would be something coaches would not ask in the NFL as it is something of the very least concern there as opposed to college. Ewers references the former Ohio State player Cardale Jones, who famously said, “Why should we have to go to class if we came here to play football? We ain’t come to play school, classes are pointless.” The question now is, does that meeting mean any connection between the Steelers drafting Ewers?

Well, he actually met with several representatives of teams like the Jaguars, Tennessee Titans, New York Jets, and Indianapolis Colts, among others. Naturally, the Steelers HC meeting with Ewers doesn’t mean anything as of now; still, we will have to see if his sense of humor can motivate Tomlin to draft him in later rounds.