Posted: Sun, 22 Aug 2010 08:18 AM - 11,345 Readers
By: Chuck Carlton
To this day, Aaron Williams can't exactly recall what Garrett Gilbert said during the 7-on-7 drill during Texas' summer workouts.
The important thing to Williams and the other veterans on the field, was that Gilbert said something in response to Williams' taking a shot at the offense. It might have been trash talk or just a bunch of angry unconnected syllables, Williams joked. The specifics hardly matter. Gilbert showed he had the fire to follow Colt McCoy.
"Finally, he's here," Williams said, remembering his reaction. "Finally, he said another word instead of walking away and being quiet."
In the process, Gilbert took one more step toward making Texas his team for several seasons to come. No one doubts the arm, the athletic potential or the bloodlines, everything that screams "star."
That one exchange might have been every bit as important as his crash course in the college football spotlight in January. He went from McCoy's season-long understudy to the featured role against Alabama in the BCS title game. Four interceptions and a costly fumble overshawdowed two second-half touchdown passes in a 37-21 loss.
But he learned. When McCoy got hurt, Gilbert briefly panicked because he couldn't find his helmet. Now, no baseball caps on the sidelines.
He also searched for more important lessons, reviewing the film a couple of times since.
"The whole game was a bit of [a] blur," Gilbert said. "I tried to look back on it and say, 'What can we do differently, so something like that doesn't happen again?' You don't want to taste a loss so close to being the national champions."
Coach Mack Brown said Gilbert learned the right lessons. When Brown apologized for putting Gilbert in a difficult situation, the coach got the response he wanted.
"Coach, that's not a problem," Gilbert told him. "The problem was I turned the ball over, or we would have won the national championship."
Gilbert gravitated to the quarterback position at a young age.
His father, Gale, played quarterback at California and in the NFL for eight seasons, reaching the Super Bowl five consecutive seasons as a reserve with Buffalo and San Diego in the 1990s.
Gale Gilbert remembers his son choosing a favorite player at age 4: John Elway.
"He's still got the posters in his room," Gale Gilbert said. "He was always destined to be a quarterback."
The younger Gilbert began attending Texas camps in grade school. By the time he led Lake Travis to back-to-back state titles and rewrote the state's high school passing records, he already picked his next school.
"We couldn't get him to look at another college," his father said.
Now his son must step into a situation where pressure is inevitable as he follows a line of succession that includes Major Applewhite, Chris Simms, Vince Young and McCoy.
"I wouldn't have it any other way," Garrett Gilbert said. "It's a real blessing to even be able to be mentioned in the same breath with those guys. ... It's a lot of fun to be in their shoes."
Few can relate to Gilbert's situation better than Missouri quarterback Blaine Gabbert.
Like Gilbert, Gabbert was a highly recruited high school player who fit the pro-style quarterback mold perfectly. He sat out his freshman season, watching campus legend Chase Daniel. By the end of last season, Gabbert had emerged from Daniel's shadow.
"Colt McCoy and Chase ... the things they did for their programs were unbelievable," Gabbert said. "But my advice to him [Gilbert] is just be your own player, do your own thing and write your own history."
Nobody, not even Texas' arch-rival, has claimed an advantage based on Gilbert's inexperience.
"No, because when they changed from Vince, we got happy, and then they gave us Colt," Oklahoma linebacker Travis Lewis said, laughing. "So with a school like Texas, you're expecting greatness. You're expecting them to replace Colt with a great player.
"I watched the national championship game, and he looked like a darn good quarterback."
Starting out
How recent Texas quarterbacks have performed in their first full season as a starter:
| Quarterback | Year | W-L | Pct. | Yds. | TD | Int. | | Major Applewhite | 1998 | 9-3 | 58.2 | 2,453 | 18 | 7 | | Chris Simms | 2001 | 11-2 | 59.1 | 2,603 | 22 | 11 | | Vince Young | 2004 | 11-1 | 59.2 | 1,849 | 12 | 11 | | Colt McCoy | 2006 | 10-3 | 68.2 | 2,570 | 29 | 7 | |
