Fozzy Whittaker, Former Texas Longhorn Running Back

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You won't want to take your Bird Dogs off. We promise you. Bozzie, appreciate the time as always. How you been?

I've been well, Zach. I appreciate you having me on the show, man, and I'm excited to see what this football season holds for this Texas football team. You know, I'm a little bit disappointed because I was expecting this epic QB battle with the way that we were hyping it up between Quinn Ewers and Arch Manning, and very quickly, and I thought it was savvy to put the distraction away to just go, okay, Quinn Ewers is our guy, but I was annoyed by it from a media standpoint. I will say there were a lot of expectations headed into spring ball. Obviously, it might have been the most hype surrounding spring ball that Texas has had in quite some time in regards to the quarterback position in a race that was to be had. I mean, whenever Quinn Ewers came, even as he transferred, the hype was there, but it wasn't nearly as much as what the battle would be between Arch Manning and Quinn Ewers.

So Sarca is savvy. You mentioned that he went on and put some of those rumors to rest from my opinion, from what I witnessed throughout spring ball and seeing him even throughout this off season, working out and getting his mind and his body right. He looks like he's a completely different person, and I'm talking about Quinn Ewers. He appears to have taken that next step forward, and he looks poised and ready to be that next quarterback that Sarc has, and his lineage of quarterbacks that have been successful and ready to make the next step of hopefully being a primetime top-tier quarterback and possibly a Heisman candidate when it's all said and done.

Yeah, I look at the first three games of the season. I'm not going to get all excited about Rice and Wyoming, but then you do have Alabama sandwich it in between, and I just wonder last year if Quinn Ewers was able to stay healthy if they would have won that game because that game was right there for the taking, and unfortunately he got hurt. That's going to be the big fun one right out of the gate, and Quinn Ewers could make a big statement in that game going to Tuscaloosa to play Alabama.

Absolutely, I 100% agree with you on that. We call it the what-if game 2.0 because it was the kind of reminiscent of the national championship whenever I played back in 2009 against Alabama. Yet again, Colt McCoy goes down in the first quarter, and we're getting ready to put some points on the board and mount up a good offensive drive, and it kind of ends and dashes our hopes as we know it, and then here comes the birth of the legacy and the dynasty of Nick Saban for the next 12, 13 years just making run after run in the college football playoffs and the BCS national championship appearances. Hopefully we don't experience the what-if game 3.0 this upcoming season, but Quinn Ewers looked like if he would have been on the same pace that he had at the first quarter where he put up 134 yards against that really good Alabama defense, then he has an opportunity to make a name for himself. That would be the game that would allow him to start getting on the watch of all of those national pundits in relation to getting all the media hype around him. I mean, he already has that this offseason with the offense that Texas is heralding with the receiver help and the tight end help and the kind of running back by committee approach, but Quinn Ewers definitely has the tools to be successful, and if they can go down in Tuscaloosa and play the way that they did throughout the course of the last game and finish it out in the fourth quarter, that would put Texas on the map in a large way against a very good Alabama team led by Nick Saver.

Fosse Whitaker here with us. We know what the expectations once were for Quinn Ewers, and he won this job, so it says a lot, especially with the hype surrounding Arch Manning. I know this is still going to be a question throughout the season. It's going to depend on how well Quinn Ewers does play, but how long of a leash do you think it is for Quinn Ewers? I think he has some grace and a little bit of leeway with Coach Sark. What Coach Sark really loves to do is once he names that starter, he wants to ride with that guy, and if that starter has some struggling moments, he lets them struggle just for a little bit before he allows for somebody else to switch it out, and we saw a little bit of that play out whenever Casey Thompson and Hudson Carr were going back and forth battling it out in Steve Sarkeesian's first year as the head coach, and so I think Quinn Ewers is the guy.

He gave him the keys already last year. Once he got back healthy, he came back again even after Hudson Carr showed and played his best game in a Texas uniform. He went back to Quinn Ewers, who was the unsound starter at the beginning of the season, and said, hey, this is still your job. Go out and prove it to everybody, so I think Quinn Ewers still has that leash, although Arch Manning is right there kind of nipping at his heels, but honestly, I think Malik Mercy is going to be that second string quarterback throughout the course of this season. I know he only flashed a little bit in the spring game if you were able to see some of that, but this guy has all of the physical tools that you are looking for in a Steve Sarkeesian type of quarterback. This guy can throw it, has a very big strong arm, was able to throw a beautiful ball to Jontae Cook in the spring game.

That was a 75-yard bomb for a touchdown, and he just was able to play lights out. I think he actually, in my opinion, had the best spring game out of all three of the quarterbacks between Quinn Ewers, Arch Manning, and himself from just a performance standpoint, but all three of those guys I think it's going to make for a healthy competition throughout the quarterback room, and they're going to push each other, but I think it's Quinn Ewers' job throughout the course of the season barring any injury. Which is fascinating, just the point about Murphy, because if Quinn Ewers is in a position, hopefully it's not for your case, where he gets benched, it's just like I think a lot of fans would expect that it would be Arch that would be the next man up, but that's not what you're saying. Yeah, I don't think so, and the reason why I say that is because every time we have hinted at it as media members and as on the Longhorn Network, we've kind of said it's Arch basically number two, Steve Sarkeesian goes out of his way to say, hey, don't forget about the guy from California that I hand-picked and recruited myself, and he made sure that Malik Mercy is always brought up in the conversation each time a quarterback battle is talked about, and Malik Murphy is, he was coming off an injury last season, so he didn't get to play, and not a lot of people saw him in practice, and then he started off spring ball actually still recovering from a separate injury, and so he had a late start in spring ball, so he's still kind of a bit of an unknown until you saw what he was able to do from a production standpoint in spring game, but it's Steve Sarkeesian's MO to say, hey, it is not just two quarterbacks in that room that are competing for a spot to be able to showcase their abilities on the big stage, but Malik Murphy is always in there and has been a big force and a driving factor of what this quarterback room can be here in 2023.

So where is Arch Manning at right now? Like, it seems like he has a lot of work to do, or is that just, you know, reading too much into it? I wouldn't say he has a lot of work to do. I think he's just a first-year guy still trying to figure out the process of what it means to come into this type of situation. It's not very often that you see a number one quarterback come into a situation where they're following behind another number one quarterback that's on the roster right now, so it's a little different as far as navigating those types of waters, but I think this is the perfect opportunity for him to learn in the biggest way from Quinn Ewers, who is in year two as a starting quarterback and under Steve Sarkeesian's offense, to be able to develop and understand, okay, this is where the playbook can go. This is the identity that coach is looking for from his starting quarterback.

This is where I could see myself evolving too and maybe even surpassing once I get the opportunity to take the torch whenever my time comes, so I think it's just more of a learning opportunity. We saw what Quinn Ewers was his first year as a redshirt freshman out there and a first-time starter. He didn't necessarily look his best throughout the course of the entire season, and I think Steve Sarkeesian doesn't want to put a guy out there if they're not completely ready, and if you can allow them time to basically use this as a redshirt year, learn some of the offense, get an idea of what the offense looks like, build some chemistry with some of the guys that you will be playing with in the future, then it could make for a better transition whenever it's Arch Manning's time to be able to take the helm as a starting quarterback. And I also wonder, Fosse Whitaker, if this was kind of by design with the Manning family, because a lot of people, when they heard that Quinn Ewers was going to Texas, it was, or Arch Manning was going to Texas, it was like, hold on, Quinn Ewers is already there. So I wonder if the Manning family kind of looked at it, maybe it's not the worst thing in the world for the plan to be to sit for a year before you then go play the two other years before you're eligible for the draft.

Yeah, absolutely. That Manning household, I mean, they know... A little intelligent in that household. They know football quite well, and they probably understand the importance of what it means sometimes to even take a year to get acclimated and adjusted to a system. I mean, we got to remember this was a guy that was supposed to graduate last month. So he's still technically very fresh whenever you're talking about his appearance. He obviously graduated early and was able to enroll at Texas, but he's still just a senior, just graduating senior in high school from age perspective. So he still has a maturation process that he has to undergo. Spring ball was very good for him to be able to start that process a little bit earlier. And then getting into summer workouts right now and getting those reps with some of those receivers, getting that throwing time on their own, having the opportunity to just be himself with his teammates is going to take them a long way. And I think, like I said, having a guy like Quinn Ewers, who's already done it for a season and has progressed and taken the next step to transform his body to be more of a, in my opinion, more of a complete quarterback for what for what Steve Sarkeesian is looking for.

It's a mold and kind of a way or blueprint to show Arch Manning, hey, whenever I'm done, if everything goes according to plan, I'm going to play this year and then I'll be out of here. And then it's between you and Malik Murphy and whoever wins that, you know, that's your job to lose. But my goal is to show you how it's done.

Get out of here and hand the keys off to somebody that's going to do it just as well as I did or take it up to another level. Fosse Whitaker, I feel like this has become a punch line every time we ask this question, is Texas back? But where is your confidence level heading into this season that will be saying Texas is back and will end up winning the Big 12 this year?

Man, that is an interesting statement, right? That's gotten some people in trouble quite a few times over the past decade with some false hopes and pretensions around what Texas is perceived to be. But I think what gives me hope about Texas, I wouldn't say that they're technically back until they prove it, just because, like we talked about over the past decade, it they haven't shown it yet.

Yeah, you don't want to be like Sam Ellinger. Yeah, until you show it to me, then then I will know for a fact what Texas really is all about. But what I can say is that Steve Sarkeesian, he's in his first three years as the head coach, has led unbelievable recruiting classes. This is some of the best recruiting that Texas has done. And it hasn't been the same way as previous top five and top 10 recruiting classes in the past decade, because Steve Sarkeesian has built this team from the trenches. And we all know the SEC transition is looming a year from now, whenever they get ready to go there in 24.

And where the game is won and lost typically in the SEC, and whenever you get to the playoffs, and whenever you get to national championship and bowl game, postseason type games, where you are most dominant at, if you're dominant in the trenches, that allows you to control the game, and it makes it that much easier for you to have success on the offensive or the defensive side of the ball. So what gives me more hope about this team is the way Steve Sarkeesian has recruited. I mean, you had 14 old linemen in the past two seasons, and a lot of these guys are top tier linemen that are huge, massive, like they come off the bus. And this is the best offensive line I've ever seen Texas has since the 2005 and 2004 kind of football season where Texas goes on to win a national championship and the team prior that played Michigan in the Rose Bowl. Those two offensive linemen looked really good.

And a lot of those guys played NFL for a very long time, has not looked like that ever since. And now what I'm seeing is Steve Sarkeesian finding a mold as to getting that offensive line back to some of that prowess, getting some dominance in there and creating identity for what Texas can be upfront and same way with the defensive line. They've recruited at a high level on the defensive side of the ball. Texas has been known for putting defensive ends in the NFL, but even some of the defensive tackles they've had some success with, I'm starting to see that come back to where Texas is.

So I think this is the best start and the best looking Texas team to get them back on the right track to say, hey, Texas is back. But I will say it whenever they prove it to me about winning a Big 12 championship and hopefully playing in the CFP. Last thing I'll ask you, Fosse Whitaker, who is the team in the Big 12? If I was to tell you, okay, Texas is not going to win it this year. Who's the team that you look at and you go, okay, it's going to be then, then in the Big 12?

Boy, that is a good question, Zach. I mean, if you look at last season as a perfect example, I mean, TCU was, I think, predicted to finish seventh. Yeah, no one had them. It was crazy. Their own coach didn't even think that was going to happen last year. Right.

Like, I don't know how you even prepare for that. And they didn't even win the Big 12. Kansas State won the Big 12. So it's like... Because they didn't get the ball to Max Duggan. I could not believe that play calling by Sonny Dykes.

Oh, we had him on a few weeks ago. I said to him, I love what you did last year, Sonny Dykes, but hand the ball off to Max Duggan. You guys would've won the Big 12. He goes, you're probably right.

Max Duggan was not going to be denied if he had that last opportunity. I can tell you that for sure. But it's very weird to kind of predict, even the year before Oklahoma State and Baylor, neither one of those teams were kind of the front runners or the preseason favorites to be able to win the Big 12 title. So it's hard to say because I really like Kansas. Now, I don't know if they would actually be able to play for a Big 12 title, but they have a lot of pieces coming back and a lot of production. Their offense looks really good. You got Devin Neal, you got Jalen Daniels, you got Daniel Hyshaw coming back, you got Mason Fairchild, you got Arnold and other receivers. The defense is the issue for them. If they can shore up their defense, they have an opportunity to really create an identity for themselves in the Big 12 race to be able to make some noise that allows them to move the needle just a little bit. And I may be putting a little too much faith in them because they haven't necessarily proven in the past two decades of kind of being a Big 12 power yet, but there's some faith in what I'm seeing Lance Leipold do out in Lawrence. And if I had to maybe say one more team, I think Joey Maguire's team out in Lubbock, Texas Tech, they've been a lot of preseason hype. He's early on in his coaching tenure, but I love what he is doing.

He brings a lot of energy to it. And this was a team similar to Kansas that had a lot of offense. It wasn't necessarily because they struggled that much on offense, but the identity that they had on defense, they couldn't necessarily stop anybody. If they can find ways to take the ball away, limit some of the yardage that they gave up in 2022, then they can make some big headwinds. They won eight games a season ago. They can make some big headwinds and finding their foothold in the Big 12 and possibly using that momentum to take over as a power for years to come whenever Oklahoma and Texas leave for the SEC.

Well, I was the other team I was gonna say Oklahoma. I can't wait to see what they do this year, Fosse Whitaker, because last year was not good. And Brent Venables, we were all saying for years, can't wait to see what he's going to do when he finally leaves Clemson and last year did not go their way.

Yeah. And I think it's kind of a footprint of what Texas did. I mean, Steve Sarkeesian is so eerily similar. Those two coaches having similar first years. Steve Sarkeesian's first year, Texas goes five and seven. Brent Venables first year, Oklahoma goes six and seven, but they both had horrendous defenses like all time worst defenses in the history of their schools. I mean, Texas was given up 400 yards per game, 200 on the ground, 200 in a year. And that looked almost identical to what Oklahoma did the following year, which was this past season.

And that is not typical of what Brent Venables is known for. Not typical of what he brings to the table and definitely not typical of what Oklahoma has been in the Big 12 in their first losing season. And I don't know how long they hadn't had a losing season in forever. And so having that on their stain, obviously they got a lot to prove about themselves, had a phenomenal recruiting class this past season, as they've always been a top 10 recruiting team as well. And I think they have a similar bounce back to what Texas did in year number two, where Texas went five and seven year one, Steve Sarkeesian finds a way to get them going. And then in a regular season, they finished eight and four with, if they had a little bit of help, could have had a chance to have an appearance, uh, in a big 12 championship game. Uh, and then they ended up losing to Washington and Alamo bowl. So finished eight and five, but I could see a jump like that happening for Oklahoma in year number two, especially with Dylan Gabriel being at the quarterback veteran guy savvy, a person that I picked as the preseason player of the year season ago. Uh, I think he's going to have a great season and find a way to get that Oklahoma team headed in the right direction with some more wins on the, on the board for them under Brent Venables in year number two.

Fossey Whitaker. Good deal. Appreciate the time. We'll be talking to you throughout the college football season. Thank you. Yes, sir. I appreciate it. Zach, man, you have a good one.