{"id":11017,"date":"2025-10-19T15:36:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T15:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/11017\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T15:36:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T15:36:08","slug":"longhorns-report-card-against-kentucky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/11017\/","title":{"rendered":"Longhorns’ report card against Kentucky"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Saturday, the Texas football<\/a> team extended its winning streak in conference play to two games. But it wasn’t easy.<\/p>\n

Texas needed a defensive stand and a 45-yard field goal in overtime to secure a 16-13 win at Kentucky’s Kroger Field. Texas (5-2, 2-1) entered this season as the favorite to win the Southeastern Conference championship, but those title hopes were nearly undone against a team that was picked to finish second-to-last in the SEC’s preseason poll.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After taking one step forward against Oklahoma last week<\/a>, Texas sophomore Arch Manning took two steps back in Lexington. An inaccurate Manning completed 44.4% of his 27 passes \u2013 which was a tick above his season-low mark of 44.0% against\u00a0UTEP on Sept. 13 \u2013 and was 4-for-9 on third down. Texas got the win so this can\u2019t be a failing effort, but Manning and his 131 yards of total offense\u00a0barely passed.<\/p>\n

Since CJ Baxter Jr. remains injured and\u00a0Jerrick Gibson dropped this class<\/a>, there weren\u2019t many running backs to grade at Kentucky. Only\u00a0Quintrevion Wisner (12 carries for 37 yards, one touchdown) and Christian Clark (three carries for 13 yards) touched the ball Saturday. Texas still hasn\u2019t had a 100-yard rusher this season, and it became obvious early on that the Longhorns wouldn\u2019t hit that mark against Kentucky since Steve Sarkisian only called for six running back rushes in the first half.<\/p>\n

The play of Manning didn\u2019t help matters, but no UT receiver topped DeAndre Moore Jr.\u2019s three receptions or 37 receiving yards. An on-field blunder by Moore at the end of the fourth quarter also saved enough time for Kentucky to force overtime.<\/p>\n

Texas couldn\u2019t run the ball behind an offensive line that was down one starter (center Cole Hutson) and one backup (guard Connor\u00a0Stroh), and the Longhorns averaged less than two yards per rush for the first time this season. Kentucky also sacked Manning three times and recorded eight\u00a0quarterback hurries. To add insult to injury, the offensive line\u2019s biggest highlight was later overturned when the official scorekeeper ruled that DJ Campbell\u2019s recovery of a\u00a0Wisner fumble\u00a0in the end zone \u2013 which would have been just the third touchdown scored by an offensive lineman in UT’s history \u2013 was actually a touchdown scored by the Texas running back.<\/p>\n

After recording 2.5 sacks the previous week against Oklahoma, edge rusher Colin Simmons<\/a> took Kentucky quarterback Cutter\u00a0Boley down three times on Saturday. Texas also didn\u2019t allow a Wildcat to rush for more than 45 yards.<\/p>\n

Anthony Hill Jr. registered 12 tackles and an interception, Trey Moore got a sack and Liona Lefau was involved in two fourth-down stops in the red zone (one at the Texas 16 in the first quarter and one at the 1-yard line in overtime). Hill did whiff on a chance to scoop up a fumble on a Kentucky scoring drive, but not much else went too wrong for this unit.<\/p>\n

The secondary allowed some plays as Boley threw for 258 and directed a last-second scoring drive in regulation, but does this unit deserve some slack since it was on the field for 86 plays and nearly 40 minutes? Maybe. Safety Michael Taaffe\u00a0was in the mix for the fourth-and-goal stop in overtime so it\u2019s hard to nitpick too much.<\/p>\n

The defense and special teams coaches deserve a better grade, but this is a group project. Texas was favored by nearly 13 points on the road but had to sweat it out as Steve\u00a0Sarkisian and the offensive staff were unable to come up with a way to attack a defense that hadn\u2019t allowed fewer than 30 points in\u00a0SEC play. Sarkisian, however, gets paid to win games and his team did do that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Saturday, the Texas football team extended its winning streak in conference play to two games. But it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11018,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[261,538,27,29,537,536,28],"class_list":{"0":"post-11017","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-college-football","9":"tag-kentucky-wildcats","10":"tag-texas","11":"tag-texas-headlines","12":"tag-texas-longhorns","13":"tag-texas-longhorns-football","14":"tag-texas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}