"Garrett Gilbert has never thought about this, but he could have been Tua Tagovailoa before Tua Tagovailoa. The whole true-freshman-gets-thrust-into-national-championship-game-and-saves-the-day story was his for the taking 10 years ago.
When Colt McCoy was knocked out five plays into the national championship game that capped off the 2009 season, Gilbert was called up. He remembers being on the Rose Bowl sideline in a baseball cap and looking at the video board for a replay because he didn’t see the hit. Then he remembers seeing chaos on the sideline, spending too much time looking for his helmet, and finally going in. “The next time I came up for air was halftime,” Gilbert says. “Everything [in the first half] was a blur.”
The part of that night often forgotten by everyone else is that despite finishing 15-of-40 for 186 passing yards with two touchdowns and four interceptions in Texas’s 37–21 loss to Alabama, Gilbert nearly led a comeback. Down just 24–21 with 3:14 left, the Longhorns were a 93-yard scoring drive away from Gilbert going down as a savior. But after a penalty and a strip-sack that led to touchdowns from Mark Ingram and Trent Richardson, the game was over.
Despite the loss, Gilbert had gained invaluable experience and remained Texas’s quarterback of the future. He’d been the No. 1 pro-style quarterback prospect in Texas during the 2009 recruiting cycle for a reason. He was teed up perfectly to take over for McCoy and continue the Longhorns’ winning tradition under Mack Brown.
Except that’s not how his story went. Gilbert didn’t win enough games over the next two seasons at Texas, transferred from his childhood dream school to SMU to finish his college career, and became a sixth-round pick by the St. Louis Rams in the 2014 NFL draft. Since then, he’s floated between five different NFL scout teams, winning a Super Bowl with the Patriots as a member of the practice squad at the end of his rookie season....."