The recent bye week offered Texas an opportunity to rest up before its stretch run that they hope coincided with a postseason push. It offered head coach Steve Sarkisian an opportunity to channel surf.
He watched Indiana sustain its undefeated season with a miraculous back-of-the-end-zone catch. He watched Oregon orchestrate a game-winning drive that ended in a last-second field goal. He watched, in his words, “teams that are trying to compete for a championship find a way to win.”
“The cream is kind of rising to the top right now,” Sarkisian said Monday at his weekly news conference. “You’re starting to see the teams that are getting better throughout the season and starting to play that way.”
The No. 10 Longhorns (7-2, 4-1 SEC) consider that to be an apt self description. They’ve revived their season after a brief detour outside of the AP Top 25 entirely and might’ve played their most complete game yet vs. a ranked Vanderbilt team two weeks ago. Their prodigious sophomore quarterback Arch Manning has started to gel with his wide receivers, his offensive line is no longer an outright liability and decrees of maturation now populate each of Sarkisian’s news conferences.
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They’d be a College Football Playoff team, per Tuesday night’s bracket reveal, if the tournament began this week. That’s nothing more than projection, though, until the Longhorns can certifiably punch their tickets.
Their boogeyman — a program which Sarkisian believes is still pretty darn close to a dynasty in a college football era which limits them — stands in the way of that.
Texas plays Georgia at Athens’ Sanford Stadium Saturday night in the first of several late-season games that will shape the conference’s postseason outlook. The No. 5 Bulldogs (8-1, 6-1) are one of five teams that still have a legitimate chance to qualify for the SEC championship game. They, like the Longhorns, can ill afford a loss with Alabama and Texas A&M still undefeated in league play.
The Longhorns lost to Georgia twice last year — once in the regular season and again in the SEC championship game — and still qualified for the 12-team postseason field. That same fate may not await them if they lose to the Bulldogs for a third time in a year Saturday night given the fragility of a three-loss team’s playoff chances. An automatic bid by way of an SEC championship game win remains the safest point of entry. The Longhorns must all but certainly win out to qualify for it and have adopted that mindset since a loss to Florida in their first conference game last month.
“This week’s not different that way,” Sarkisian said. “It’s not like we’re putting more into it than that. It is what it is. If we want to play in the SEC championship game, we’ve got to win Saturday night, it just is what it is. Let’s focus on what we need to do today to make that happen.”
Yeah, well, about that.
The Bulldogs are 51-2 in their last 53 home games and own college football’s best overall record since the start of the 2020 season. Their lone loss this season was to an Alabama team that’s likely postseason bound and in the driver’s seat for a SEC championship game berth. The Longhorns haven’t beaten Georgia since quarterback Sam Ehlinger declared that they were “back” after a Sugar Bowl win six years ago. Their last regular season win against the Bulldogs — which derives from an admittedly minute three-game sample size — was 66 years ago.
The single largest difference between both teams in last year’s two games was each offense’s ability to run the football against a stout defense. The Bulldogs won twice despite subpar performances from quarterbacks Carson Beck and Gunnar Stockton in large part because they were able to average 3.7 yards per carry and score five combined touchdowns on the ground over the eight-plus quarters of play.
The Longhorns averaged 1.1 yards per carry, didn’t score a rushing touchdown and forced quarterback Quinn Ewers to throw nearly 100 combined passes against a defense that produced three first-round picks in this spring’s NFL draft.
It’s not a formula that behooves Texas, even if Georgia’s pass rush and coverage defense has been below average for its and the SEC’s standards, even if its run defense remains a premier unit and even if Manning (who’s thrown for 300-plus yards in two consecutive games) has played with greater poise and command in the second half of this season. Manning mastered a quick-play offense vs. the Commodores but benefited from a rushing offense that averaged 3.7 yards per carry and created manageable third-down opportunities.
The Texas ground game — and the offensive line it runs behind — still remains a work in progress and is statistically worse than last year’s unit. Georgia’s ability to stop the run has been the strength of its defense. Manning and company may struggle to exploit an average-for-Georgia-standards pass defense if it becomes their only method of attack.
“When you’re in the SEC, you have to run the ball efficiently to win games, it’s no secret,” running back CJ Baxter said. “You have to be able to run the football well to win a football game. Running is a pivotal part of football. I know that the run game is going to be big this week. We want to be able to run the ball against a great defense.”
It might be their best chance to win.
The championship-caliber teams find ways to do that.
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