Texas football left no doubt against Texas Tech: Longhorns must be taken seriously again
AUSTIN, Texas — Back on Aug. 1, the day before Texas began preseason camp, coach Steve Sarkisian was asked what was standing in the way of the Longhorns accomplishing their goals.
Sarkisian and the Longhorns spent much of the offseason embracing the high expectations placed on the team. They were the preseason Big 12 favorites. Some viewed them as a College Football Playoff contender. Sarkisian welcomed all of it, confident in the roster he constructed and the culture he created in his two-plus years on the Forty Acres.
The evidence, from roster talent and depth to the program trajectory and even how the Longhorns’ schedule set up, pointed in their favor. But recent history — the past 13 years of it — wasn’t on their side and there were plenty of skeptics to remind them. Sarkisian, who had his own point to prove , was well aware of them.
“We haven’t done it yet,” Sarkisian said that day. “We have to go earn it. We have to go do it. And you have to do it with a level of consistency. ... One of the key messages to the team is there’s a level of consistency that’s needed to be a champion. The way you work day in and day out, the way you perform week in and week out.”
Sarkisian later added: “What stands in the way is us.”
With their regular season now complete, the No. 7 Longhorns can officially check their first goal off the list. Texas’ 57-7 win over Texas Tech on Friday at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium clinched the Longhorns (11-1, 8-1 Big 12) a berth in the Big 12 championship game, moving them one step closer to their first conference title since 2009.
“To be 11-1 at a place like this, this is kind of where I thought we should be,” Sarkisian said after Friday’s win. “I recognize that at the University of Texas there’s high expectations and there’s a high standard of what excellence looks like. But our internal expectations, my internal expectations are that and probably above. That’s what we came here to do. And now we’ve put ourselves in position to go do it.”
Scarred Texas fans, who have absorbed all of the program’s past failings since Colt McCoy’s right arm went numb against Alabama , could have envisioned any number of ways for this to go wrong. After losing to Oklahoma in October, the Longhorns’ margin for error shrunk. Close calls against Houston , Kansas State and TCU have been nerve-racking. They knew Texas Tech, led by energetic coach Joey McGuire, would come in charged up, believing after last year’s win in Lubbock and hoping to land one last blow on Texas’ way out of the conference.
Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark, who publicly announced his rooting interests in Friday night’s game nearly three months ago , showed up as promised.
But nothing was standing in the Longhorns’ way on Friday night. Texas delivered the type of convincing win it has been aiming for.
The defense — as it has been for most of this year — was stifling. Defensive tackle T’Vondre Sweat consistently gave Texas Tech’s offensive line all 362 pounds of his might to disrupt the Red Raiders’ backfield. The rest of the Longhorns’ defensive front, from Byron Murphy and Alfred Collins to Barryn Sorrell and Justice Finkley and even Jett Bush , teed off on Texas Tech quarterback Behren Morton throughout the night. Texas’ depth on defense was on full display and true freshmen Anthony Hill Jr. , Malik Muhammad and Derek Williams Jr. provided a glimpse of a bright future with their impact plays.
Special teams once again came up big, with a blocked punt courtesy of Michael Taaffe and a kickoff return touchdown by Keilan Robinson .
The offense, which has had its issues this year, particularly on fourth down and in the red zone, didn’t completely erase them — the Longhorns scored one touchdown in their first five red zone trips on Friday — but it didn’t matter much. Like they have all season, they did enough, even if it wasn’t always pretty. Even Arch Manning , the former No. 1 overall recruit, got in on the action for the first time .
By and large, Texas stayed away from the glaring mistakes that have made some of its wins closer than necessary. It played fast, physical and tough, the way Sarkisian intended.
“We’ve been in so many tight games and so many guys had to make plays in the fourth quarter in the waning minutes of games,” Sarkisian said. “To go into the fourth quarter of this game (with a big lead), I think everybody just felt like ‘Finally, we’ve gotten to a point where we’re not all biting our nails there until the end.’”
More than anything, it’s that toughness — both physical and mental — that matters most for this Texas team. It has been built over the three seasons of the Sarkisian era, through the way they recruited, trained and practiced. For much of the decade-plus that the program languished, opponents were quick to call Texas “soft.” These Longhorns are the furthest from that and showed it on Friday night in the way they beat down the Red Raiders.
And the Longhorns had plenty of motivation, built up from more than a year of stewing over their 37-34 overtime loss at Texas Tech last season in addition to Yormark’s preseason comments. When the team lifted this week, Yormark’s comments to McGuire — “You better take care of business” — and McGuire’s “Everything runs through Lubbock” postgame speech after beating Texas last season played on repeat throughout the weight room.
“Throughout our whole lift, all we heard in our ears was the commissioner and the (Texas Tech) head coach,” Sweat guys. “I think it got guys to really listen and feel what they were saying and when Friday came, go out there and play with a chip on our shoulder.”
During a break in the action in the game’s final minute, Yormark’s face popped up on the video board as that infamous clip played. While David Bowie’s “Under Pressure” blared through the speakers, Texas fans loudly booed. When Yormark disappeared, the Big 12 championship logo and the words “SEE Y’ALL IN ARLINGTON” appeared in white, with AT&T Stadium — site of the conference title game — in the red backdrop. Those boos quickly turned to cheers.
“That was wonderful,” Sweat said. “I feel like they deserve that one.”
The job isn’t done. There’s still a conference championship to win and perhaps more, if things fall the Longhorns’ way in the Playoff chase. But regardless of what happens, one thing is for certain: Texas is back to contending and being taken seriously.
Nothing is standing of the way of that anymore.
(Top photo of Xavier Worthy : Tim Warner / )
