Texas QB takes his lumps and understands how not to stress about it
Say this for Texas quarterback Jerrod Heard: The youngster has a humility and sense of humor about him that is probably keeping everybody from freaking out.
It's been another difficult year under coach Charlie Strong with Texas needing a big finish just to match last season's six wins. At 3-5 with four games to play, it's going to be tough task, especially if using the Longhorns' last game, a 24-0 loss at Iowa State, as the barometer.
Heard has seemingly been able to roll with the punches. Remember the embarrassing Twitter war after the ugly loss at TCU when upperclassmen and underclassmen were going at it? Heard wasn't one of them and his response to the situation was classic: "I’m gonna delete their Twitter. You ain’t even gotta worry about that. I’m about to take their phones and delete their Twitter. That whole class, they love Twitter. They love it too much.”
Coming off last week's discouraging loss at Iowa State where Heard and the offense managed to barely eclipse 200 total yards of offense, Heard said after watching film of the game: "I did not like what I saw."
The lackluster outing was startling to Texas fans who have started to become accustomed to highlight-reel type plays from Heard. After all, he broke Vince Young's school record for total yards in a game against Cal and has had numerous big gains. Heard then equated Texas fans bailing on him after a poor performance to when he was the quarterback at Denton Guyer High School, which he happened to lead to two state championships.
"When we won, everyone was giving me high-fives. I got free lunches from my neighbors," Heard said. "When we lost, everyone was taking my lunch."
Right now, Texas fans certainly could use a similar sense of humor.