Tyrone Swoopes

Alphonso Tyrone Swoopes. Jr is an American football quarterback for the University of Texas Longhorns football team. After an injury to starting quarterback David Ash, Swoopes became the starting quarterback.

High school career

Swoopes was a highly recruited high school football player. He played in the 2013 U.S. Army All-American Bowl, and consistently was rated among the top 10 quarterback recruits in the country. He also played guard in basketball, in baseball, and competed in the long jump, triple jump, 4 × 400 m, 4 × 200 m, 4 × 100 m and shot put in track and field.^[1]

College career

2013 season

Swoopes saw limited play in 2013, coming in mostly for mop-up duty in six games including the Alamo Bowl.

2014 season

In the first game of the season Swoopes entered the game only for the last series, but after a career-ending injury to David Ash, Swoopes was thrown into the unexpected role of starter for the 2nd game against BYU. He remained the starter for the rest of the season.^[2]

Swoopes described the season as one of "ups and downs."^[3] Despite solid play by Swoopes, his debut game against BYU represented the worst home loss, 41–7, for Texas since 1997.^[4] Swoopes had another solid performance the following week against #12 UCLA, but despite a late lead, the Longhorns again came up short. Swoopes led Texas to a win over unranked Kansas, then a loss to #7 Baylor before throwing for a career high 334 yards in a close loss to Oklahoma. That was followed by a gutsy win over Iowa State in which Swoopes, who set a career high for total offense, led the Longhorns on a game winning drive with only 28 seconds left, after having led them on a touchdown drive only a minute earlier. The next game brought a shutout loss to #11 Kansas State. Then the team won three straight over Texas Tech, #24 West Virginia and Oklahoma State. The highlight of the season was arguably the upset win of then #24 West Virginia, which was not a great game for Swoopes, but was a necessary one for Texas to become bowl-eligible. The next week, against Oklahoma State, Swoopes had the best game of his career, with 305 yards, 2 TDs, 0 interceptions and a career high quarterback rating of 170.4. In the last game of the regular season, Texas was beaten badly by #5 TCU in a game in which Swoopes threw a career high 4 interceptions.

Swoopes and the Longhorns went to the Texas Bowl where they met an old Southwest Conference rival Arkansas, but the offense, which struggled all season due to injury and rule-violation losses to the offensive line, was able to muster only 59 yards of offense. It was Swoopes' worst game. He produced only 25 yards of total offense (or minus-21 yards if you include his fourth-quarter interception return yardage), −32 yards of rushing and registered a career low quarterback rating of 63.2. His performance during the last two games of the season and his 5–7 record as a starter left analysts questioning his role in 2015. Before the bowl game, Max Olson of ESPN wrote of him "he will have to fight for his job next year."^[3]

2015 season

Despite an off-season competition with promising redshirt freshman Jerrod Heard, Swoopes, for the first time in his career, started the season as the team's #1 quarterback. In his first game, on the road against Notre Dame, he threw for a disappointing 7-of-22 passes for 93 yards and rushed 10 times for a net gain of 17 yards; while Heard played sparingly. The next week, Heard was the starter and it was Swoopes who played few snaps.

Swoopes was used as a goal line and short yardage QB for 9 of the next 10 games over the season, scoring 11 rushing TDs and 3 passing TDs in these games. Swoopes was inserted into the game against Texas Tech when Heard received a concussion, then started at QB in the last game of the year at #12 Baylor. Texas won the game in an upset 23-17.

Statistics

Awards

References

External links

• Texas profile