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Arch Manning is no long the Heisman favorite, but he has rebounded to put Texas in position to make the College Football Playoff. (Sam Hodde\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
(Sam Hodde via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
That means Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian is 0-2 against Georgia’s Kirby Smart, to go along with his 0-2 records against Alabama\u2019s Kalen DeBoer (while DeBoer was at Washington) and 0-2 against Ohio State\u2019s Ryan Day. Big-time coaches and big-time teams go through other big-time coaches in big-game moments, and a win in Athens would quell some growing concerns. Yes, the Longhorns are 32-7 over the past two-plus seasons, including two CFP appearances. But the general consensus, from both pollsters and fans, is that it\u2019s time for Texas to move past the semifinal stage.<\/p>\n
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Thing is, the Longhorns have quietly been getting better every week. Since that Florida loss, they\u2019ve won four straight against SEC teams, including two top-10 teams in Oklahoma and Vanderbilt. The defense has been simply smothering, posting the conference\u2019s best numbers against the run and leading the entire country with 34 sacks. Manning has dialed up two straight three-touchdown, 300-plus-yard passing games, and won SEC offensive player of the week after his performance against Vanderbilt two weeks ago.<\/p>\n
Smart praised Manning\u2019s \u201cgreat composure,\u201d noting that he\u2019s \u201cnot really affected by many things, even the way he\u2019s managed the hype and expectations of what he was supposed to be this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neither Georgia nor Texas controls their own route into the SEC championship. Texas A&M and Alabama currently have no SEC losses, and the Dawgs and Longhorns would need some dominoes to fall in order to get there. But barring a total November collapse, Georgia is in the CFP field and is angling for a potential first-round bye.<\/p>\n
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Texas also isn\u2019t quite in must-win territory yet, not with a season-ending game against No. 3 Texas A&M remaining \u2014 plus a necessary win against Arkansas, of course. Winning either this weekend or the final regular-season one could put the Longhorns in position to claim a CFP bid even with three losses.<\/p>\n
And that Georgia-Arkansas-A&M stretch provides another subplot to the season\u2019s waning weeks: Texas\u2019 conference-heavy late schedule as other teams face non-conference opponents. Next week, for instance, Georgia plays the Charlotte 49ers, Alabama plays Eastern Illinois and Texas A&M draws Samford, while Ole Miss is off.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI don’t love our schedule, but it’s our schedule,\u201d Sarkisian said earlier this week. \u201cAnd so I do love it in the same breath, because it is what it is. You play the schedule, you play the hand you’re dealt. But I just don’t think there’s a lot of parity from a scheduling standpoint of who’s getting non-conference games when, and who’s getting what level of non-conference opponents, because of the impact that it has down the road when you start talking about the playoffs.”<\/p>\n
It\u2019s tough to feel any sympathy for Texas, given that the Longhorns and Oklahoma jumped to the SEC in 2024 long after many schedules and agreements were in place. A team ranked No. 1 at any point in the season shouldn\u2019t be troubling itself with concerns about conference vs. non-conference opponents.<\/p>\n
For Texas, the mantra is simple: Winning takes care of everything. And it all starts this weekend between the hedges in Athens.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s my first time preparing for barking,\u201d Manning said. \u201cIt should be fun.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One way or another, Arch Manning was going to be taking snaps at Sanford Stadium in the Georgia-Texas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2895,3230,3127,14659,262,3118,9662,2917,2470,3130,3129,2926,9910,28772,9764,28771,27,29,28,15828],"class_list":{"0":"post-50735","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-alabama","9":"tag-arch-manning","10":"tag-arkansas","11":"tag-charlotte-49ers","12":"tag-college-football-playoff","13":"tag-florida","14":"tag-gunner-stockton","15":"tag-kentucky","16":"tag-longhorns","17":"tag-mississippi-state","18":"tag-ohio-state","19":"tag-oklahoma","20":"tag-ole-miss","21":"tag-samford","22":"tag-sec","23":"tag-sec-championship","24":"tag-texas","25":"tag-texas-headlines","26":"tag-texas-news","27":"tag-the-longhorns"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50735","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=50735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}