It was never, ever easy being Matt Saracen.

As a high school sophomore, he had to act as the head of his household and caretaker to a grandmother suffering from dementia. He held down a part-time job dishing out burgers and soft-serve ice cream at the Alamo Freeze while keeping up with his studies and continuing to pursue his interest in art. He was forced to listen to the relentless unsolicited advice offered by his best friend, Landry Clarke, and to tolerate the mood swings of his often melodramatic girlfriend, Julie Taylor. And on top of all that, he had to deal with the pressure of being thrust from backup QB to QB1 after the dean of Dillon Panthers football, Jason Street, suffered a devastating injury.

Somehow Saracen handled all of this responsibility with admirable maturity and a loving heart. Also, briefly, with a tendency to hook up with his grandma’s improbably hot live-in Guatemalan nurse.

Look, Matt Saracen was only human, okay? He had flaws. For starters, he was a mumbler. Seriously, count the times you had to rewind your DVR because you couldn’t quite make out what the heck Saracen just said. The total is somewhere in triple digits, isn’t it?

He sometimes made mistakes, too, like getting drunk with Tim Riggins in the middle of the day, or going to Chicago without returning Julie’s calls, or having his picture taken in a hot tub with  …