After once again beating their perennial little brother, Texas A&M, in the Lone Star Showdown for the second straight year, Steve Sarkisian cut a promo for his team, stating that it would be a disservice to the game if his Longhorns did not make the College Football Playoff.
After being #1 in the preseason, the Texas Longhorns have fallen from grace and now are waiting to see if the committee will look favorably upon the team from Austin. Does Texas even have a case to be in the playoffs? At first glance, a look at their 10-3 record and hearing any discourse about Arch Manning would scream at anyone that they don’t deserve a spot, but diving deeper and looking at their résumé, the Longhorns have a better chance than some might think to make the playoff.
The first thing that gives the Longhorns a credible chance at making the playoff is their quality of wins on the season so far. Texas has three wins against top-10 teams this season: beating Oklahoma, Vanderbilt, and Texas A&M. Two of these teams (OU and A&M) are currently sitting comfortably in the CFP, and Vanderbilt has a very good chance of making it as well. Not only has no other team in the entirety of college football beaten three top-10 teams this year, it hasn’t been done since the 2019 LSU football team, which many consider one of the best teams of all time. As a committee who has stated they will prioritize head-to-head matchups, you can’t include those three teams and not include Texas, especially since two of those teams were beaten by double digits.
The three losses that Texas has on their record are against the #1 team in the country and current reigning national champions, the Ohio State Buckeyes, the #4 ranked UGA Bulldogs, and the lowly 4-8 Florida Gators. The Week 1 matchup against Ohio State should—and I believe won’t be—the loss that withholds Texas from making the playoffs. The BTA from UGA and the embarrassing loss to Florida will be the ones that keep Texas out. The game at UGA, while the Longhorns lost 35-10, does not tell the whole story. Anyone who watched the game knows that after going up 17-10 on Texas, the surprise onside kick from UGA and second score did not give Texas the ball back to respond to UGA until the near end of the fourth quarter. That loss is not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. When it comes to Florida, while that team is atrocious, The Swamp is well known as being one of the toughest places in all of college football to play, and with it being Texas’s first time playing at UF since 1940, the crowd really did make an impact. Also, undoubtedly a worse loss than Texas’s was Alabama’s loss to Florida State, who currently just got demolished by Florida with an interim coach. The only difference between the losses was that Alabama’s happened early enough for people to forget about it.
The two close games against Kentucky and Mississippi State may also impact Texas’s chance to make the CFP, but let’s not forget the narrative that in the SEC every game is important and that the talent is so deep that not every game is a gimme. And seemingly every year minus this one, UGA has a close game with a random bottom-feeder SEC team.
One last reason that Texas should make the College Football Playoff is the general improvement of performance from the team and young quarterback Arch Manning, who has had 1,147 passing yards, 9 touchdowns, and 1 interception. His passer rating over this period was 154.1. The games were against Vanderbilt, Georgia, Arkansas, and Texas A&M. This young Texas team is heating up at the right time and deserves to make the playoff. However, will I be upset if they don’t? No. This Texas team controlled its own destiny this season, and while they deserve to be in in my eyes, no 3-loss team should have an automatic bid in the playoffs, even with a high-ranked non-conference matchup to show for it.
