Time Was Right for Texas to Turn Offense Over to Jerrod Heard

If ever there was a time for the Texas Longhorns to shake things up on offense, it was after their embarrassing 38-3 season-opening loss against the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. So it wasn’t too surprising, though still refreshing, when Texas head coach Charlie Strong named redshirt freshman Jerrod Heard the starter ahead of their Week 2 game against the Rice Owls.

During the week, Texas announced that they were changing things up on their offensive staff, demoting co-offensive coordinators Shawn Watson and Joe Wickline on Tuesday while promoting receivers coach Jay Norvell to take over the playcalling. The team didn’t announce any other changes, particularly at quarterback, the rest of the week but made the switch to Heard when the Horns took the field on Saturday night.

His debut was a breath of fresh air for a Texas offense that had been stuck in neutral for far too long. He wasn’t asked to do too much in the passing game, connecting on four of seven pass attempts, but racked up 120 yards thanks to two long touchdown passes and 96 yards rushing with another touchdown on 10 carries as he led Texas to their first win of the season.

Heard replaced Tyrone Swoopes who started 13 games for Texas over the last two season with mixed results. Over his last three starts dating back to last season, Swoopes has struggled and the Texas offense has struggled with him. In the 2014 regular-season finale against the TCU Horned Frogs, Swoopes completed just 20 of 34 passes for 200 yards with one touchdown and four interceptions in a 48-10 loss. In the Texas Bowl against the Arkansas Razorbacks, Swoopes managed just 25 yards of total offense (including negative-32 rushing yards) with a touchdown and an interception in the 31-7 loss.

Strong opened up the quarterback competition this offseason between Swoopes and Heard with the pair battling back and forth up through fall camp. Texas went with the experience of Swoopes for the season-opener with infamously disastrous results. Swoopes completed just 7 of 22 passes for 93 yards as the Texas offense failed to find the endzone as they put out one of the worst offensive outputs of the opening week college football. Despite Heard playing sparingly against Notre Dame, the writing was on the wall that a change should be coming.

Texas has fallen from their place of prominence in the Big 12 because they have struggled to get competent quarterback play on a consistent basis. Tyrone Swoopes has had enough of an opportunity to know that he isn’t the answer under center, so now it’s time for Jerrod Heard to show what he can do.

So far so good.

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