Texas head football coach Steve Sarkisian sends uplifting message to Longhorns RB Jaydon Blue after CFP win

RB Jaydon Blue saved the day for the Longhorns during Texas’s 38-24 first-round College Football Playoff win over Clemson.

Clemson’s last-ditch effort boiled down the game to a one-score game at 31-24 in the fourth quarter. Blue, however, snatched the reins from the Tigers right after their drive with a crushing  77-yard rushing touchdown.

Blue’s run was the third-longest touchdown ever scored in a CFP game since the format’s inception in 2014. Steve Sarkisian was a proud head coach after the win in Austin.

“I gave him a big hug and told him how proud I was of him,” Sarkisian said of Blue in his post-game press conference, per On3.

For Sarkisian, it wasn’t just his 77-yard TD that made him swell with pride for the RB. It was for every other time that Blue stepped up this season despite struggling with injuries.

“As I touched on the team adversity coming out of Atlanta, we talked about individual adversity last night, as well, and to think about that young man fighting through the ankle injury earlier in the season, having some fumble issues, but continuing to practice well, continuing to be a really good teammate, the intent over the last few weeks and month of the way he’s been practicing, for him to have the night like he had tonight or today, just really proud of him,” Sarkisian added.

“He was able to continue to work and improve his game, and then to have a game like this in the playoff, just really proud of him.

“But if I know one thing about our team, that we respond. When times get tough, we respond. Jaydon was a great example of that.”

Blue was the Longhorns’ RB1 earlier this season, but because of fumbling issues, he lost the spot to Quintrevion Wisner.

Call it the RB’s luck or the sweet fruit of his hard work, Blue went above and beyond Texas’s expectations of him when Wisner got banged up against Clemson in the first half.

Blue finished with 14 carries for a career-high 146 yards and two scores, but his grand TD set Texas’s first College Football Playoff win against Clemson in stone — making an unarguable case for his spot back as the Longhorns’ RB1.