At this year’s Big 12 Media Days, after the mass of press dwindled down to just a few people, I asked Texas QB Sam Ehlinger how he felt about the fact that he rushed for 16 touchdowns last season, something only 14 other players had done (all running backs except for Army’s Kelvin Hopkins Jr., whose offense runs a triple-option flexbone scheme that basically treats the QB position as an extra RB).

“It’s pretty easy to rack up 16 rushing touchdowns when it’s from the 1-yard-line and your offensive line gives you a large hole,” Ehlinger said.

Simple enough answer for a simple enough question. Especially when Ehlinger’s special jump move behind his offensive line is almost so Sam Ehlinger that it’s the most used B-roll footage when focusing on him.

Here’s a classic “Ehlinger 2 Y Banana” in action against OU. This was his 3rd rushing TD of the day.

“I don’t know what it is, to tell you the truth,” Ehlinger said on his dead-leg motion that he frequently uses on plays like the one shown above. “All my teammates give me crap about it, they’re like, ‘What is that move? I mean it works, but what are you doing?’ and I honestly have no idea, I don’t know where it came from.”

But then I started wondering: how does this happen, and what benefits does it bring to the Longhorn offense?

Well first, I’d have to find just how right Ehlinger’s assumption was in regards to “just falling” in the end zone.

Q: Does Ehlinger just “fall in”?

His average rush on attempts where he scored a touchdown was 4.5, and his only TD from over 10 yards out came from 16-yards early during the Big 12 Championship game. So yes, he is very much correct in saying that he was punching in TDs and racking up the stat sheet that way.

It would be unfair and uninformative to compare Ehlinger to running backs in terms of average rush yards on touchdowns, so it would make more sense to compare him to his mostly-throwing colleagues.

Q: Well, how does he rank among quarterbacks?

And looking back to 2000 to now, plenty of other quarterbacks have amassed 16 or more rushing touchdowns. In fact, Ehlinger finished T-35th with his 16 touchdowns. Not so impressive, until you factor in the fact that many of the players ahead of him on the list were primarily running quarterbacks whose majority of touchdowns were of the running variety.

If you plot every QB to rush for 16+ rushing TDs in a season since 2000 in terms of their rushing and passing TDs, the graph looks like this:

Of course, there’s Tim Tebow’s sophomore season, when the Gators went 9-4 behind Tebow’s combined 55 TDs. There’s Tebow’s teammate Cam Newton on the graph as well, though this is his 2010 championship and Heisman-winning season at Auburn. And there’s two other Heisman seasons, with Manziel’s freshman season and Lamar Jackson’s 2016 performance on this graph as well.

So when comparing rushing TDs and factoring in passing TDs, Ehlinger rises above the clump below the 25 passing TD line and into the echelon of Heisman winners.

But despite the numbers, when you look at the play itself, you can see that Ehlinger’s ability to hit the hole for a bevy of close-range touchdowns simply takes away the need for a running back in the backfield and forces the defense to play with one less man in the box, or makes the running back a blocker, as shown in the play below:

The Sooners load 8 in the box to counter Texas’ 8. TE Andrew Beck and RB Keaontay Ingram are going to function as key run blockers to match whoever comes through the hole.

The line moves right for an inside zone, except instead of Ehlinger handing off to Ingram from the left and becoming a useless blocker on a read play, Ingram moves to meet the defensive lineman coming through the gap, while Beck handles the corner on the outside.

This is where Ehlinger reveals himself to be humble. Instead of trying to follow Ingram and bounce it to the outside to the corner, Ehlinger makes a cut, beating the one man he needs to in order to score.

From here, it’s probably just a five or six yard gain from scrimmage, but all Ehlinger needs is two. Touchdown.

And so, after examining the stats and the context, Ehlinger is revealed to be a combination of Tim Tebow (outside the red zone) and some flex version of Blake Bell when Texas is inside the opponent’s 10.

He is so capable as a runner from close range that he necessitates another defender in the box to deal with two running backs, or forces another defender out of the box to deal with an extra receiver. This allows for basically any version of the Ehlinger 2 Y Banana play to function as a 1-on-1 Oklahoma drill at worst, and at best allows Ehlinger to throw the Horns Up as he strolls into the end zone.

Time will tell if this play will continue to be effective for the Longhorns this coming season, but with Rimington Trophy watch list center Zach Shackelford and Georgia Tech transfer Parker Braun, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Ehlinger 2 Y Banana in full force again come this fall.