Texas coach Steve Sarkisian has been deliberate with his words whenever he talks about the starting quarterback situation. He’s always backed Quinn Ewers as the starter and maintained Arch Manning is the backup.

He did it again Saturday night even after a dreadful offensive performance against No. 5 Georgia in a 30-15 loss.

“Quinn’s our starting quarterback,” Sarkisian said, leaving zero wiggle room.

To be fair, Tom Brady would’ve struggled in the first half considering how well Georgia’s blitz pressure put the clamps on Texas. But Ewers had a particularly bad start, which put the Horns in a 20-0 hole.

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On UT’s first six drives, Ewers was 6-of-12 passing for 17 yards with one interception and one lost fumble. At that point, the Horns had 15 total yards. He held the ball way too long and didn’t try much in the vertical passing game, opting for too many checkdowns. Georgia defenders were all over those dink and dunk attempts.

“It’s always hard whenever you start out the way that we did and I did,” Ewers said. “But I think we did a good job of staying poised. We never quit, which was cool to see from this team. You know, there were moments whenever people probably thought they were going to start pulling away, but it always felt like that we were always still in the game.

“But it's tough whenever you start out like that and go down, whatever it was, 23-0 or something like that.”

Sarkisian said at that point in the game, he was simply trying to get himself recalibrated. He pulled Ewers and inserted Manning with 4:40 left in the second quarter.

“And that really was the decision to kind of make the change and put Arch in there for, I didn't know if it'd be a series or two, depending on how much time was left in the first half,” Sarkisian said.

Unfortunately for Texas, Manning didn’t do much better. He was 3-for-6 passing for 19 yards and also lost a fumble.

“I was just trying to get Quinn in the locker room, get him kind of regrouped, recalibrated, and then, and then try to find some rhythm in the second half. And we did,” Sarkisian said.

Texas got the ball when the second half began. Ewers went back in and played the rest of the game. He engineered two touchdown drives, but the Horns turned it over on downs four times in the second half, including on the last three possessions trying to stage a late comeback.

Ewers completed 25 of 43 passes for 211 yards, but it was the second straight week he had a slow start. Texas was good enough to blow past a mediocre Oklahoma team. Georgia was something completely different.

Unless something changes, Ewers will start next week against Vanderbilt. The Horns need a dramatic bounce-back performance from QB1 to keep their season on track.

“We’re still in a good position to where we want to be,” Ewers said. “Obviously, we didn’t want to lose the game, but our season is not over. We’re still 6-1, and we have a great opportunity to continue on throughout the rest of the season and see what happens.”