The Quarterback You Have To Root For
It's impossible not to pull for Colts QB Sam Ehlinger
On any given Sunday in the NFL, 32 men will suit up to be a starting quarterback. They are stars, and they are back-ups. They are underdogs, and they are golden boys. But there is nobody quite as easy to root for as Sam Ehlinger will be this Sunday when he makes his first start for the Indianapolis Colts.
Ehlinger doesn’t look like an NFL quarterback, and to be honest, he doesn’t quite have the arm to be an NFL quarterback either—but Ehlinger’s grace is second to none.
His journey to the NFL is wrought with tragedy. When he was only 14, his father passed away suddenly from a heart attack that occurred while he was swimming a triathlon. As a teenager, Ehlinger was forced to be the man of the house for his mother, sister, and little brother Jake.
“He has been my rock at times, and my friend, my buddy, but I also really tried to let him be a kid,” his mother, Jena, told ESPN in 2017. “When he would get really sad that first year, the few times that I would see it, I was like, 'OK, he's actually getting it out.' I said to the kids over and over again, 'You gotta get it out, or it's gonna come out later, ugly.' I do think there was unspoken pressure, because you're the oldest and you're the guy and all that, but he handled it beautifully.”
At the time, Ehlinger was joining the football program at Westlake High School, located just outside of Austin. Westlake was just what Ehlinger needed, and its football team is known for two things: developing quarterbacks and fostering a family-like culture. The head coach was Todd Dodge, a Texas football legend, and he took a special interest in the young quarterback. Dodge took Ehlinger out for dinner. After practice, they’d go bowling. They broke every huddle by saying, “Family on three! 1-2-3…FAMILY!” Dodge retold a parable of a bulldog who was constantly harassed by the bigger, well-groomed dogs next door. No matter what the bigger dogs did, the bulldog kept yapping at them—just wouldn’t stop barking—and finally, the bigger dogs left him alone.
Ehlinger kind of plays like that bulldog, even today. At Westlake, he rewrote the record book that included names like Nick Foles and Drew Brees. He dragged his team to the state championship. When asked how Ehlinger thinks, Dodge said, “‘There ain't nothing this game can bring to me that I haven't been through. There's nothing that can be bigger than that, more pressure than that, more sad than that.' And that's the way he plays."
Perhaps most special, Ehlinger earned a scholarship to play for Texas, the school down the road where he spent many Saturdays growing up cheering with his dad for their beloved Longhorns.
Ehlinger started for four years at Texas and led the Horns to a Sugar Bowl victory against an ascendant Georgia squad. And in his final seasons in Austin, his brother Jake joined him in burnt orange as a walk-on linebacker. During games, nearly every broadcast featured a picture of Ehlinger flashing the “Hook ‘em horns” sign as a kid, and then showed his mother and sister watching proudly in the stands.
They watched proudly when Ehlinger was drafted in the sixth round by the Indianapolis Colts in 2021. That’s when his NFL journey began, and a few days later, he got on a plane bound for Indianapolis, signed his contract, got a physical at the team facility. It was then—on his very first day in the league—that he got the call from the Austin police department. They’d tried reaching his mother, the officer told him, but they couldn’t get through. They’d found his brother Jake. He was at the hospital. Overdose. He wasn’t going to make it.
Colts owner Jim Irsay told Ehlinger to use the team plane to back to Austin. When Ehlinger got there, his old football coach, Todd Dodge, was already at his childhood home, praying with his mother and sister. Ehlinger took time off. He delivered a beautiful eulogy for his brother.
In Indianapolis last year, he carried a clipboard, the backup quarterback. It wasn’t a surprise—nobody ever expected Ehlinger to do much more as a rookie—but quietly, you started to hear the whispers. Reports that the Colts thought they had something special in their young quarterback. Stories that he was winning over the locker room. Fans, teammates, and coaches were starting to learn: it’s impossible not to love the guy.
“As men, there’s an idea that you have to be tough, and instead of correctly addressing, identifying and releasing those emotions, you bottle them up and push them down, and it’s almost like it’s a bomb building up inside of you,” Ehlinger said last year. And so, he talked about his grief with his coach. He talked about it with Irsay, the owner. He had long chats with Chris Ballard, the GM. And he opened up to teammates, too.
That brings us to this week. Ehlinger started the season as a third stringer. He’s starting this weekend, not due to injury but because the team thinks he gives them a better chance to win than veterans Matt Ryan and Nick Foles. According to head coach Frank Reich, Ehlinger will be the starter for the rest of the season.
A great quarterback is tough. He can handle adversity. He’s a leader.
Sam Ehlinger is a great quarterback.
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