At one point, it looked like the No. 5 Texas Longhorns were going to make it yet another exciting finish against the No. 5 Georgia Bulldogs on Saturday at Sanford Stadium in Athens.<\/p>\n
Anthony Hill intercepted Georgia quarterback Gunner Stockton, which Texas turned into a scoring drive and closed the game to four points with 5:27 left in the third quarter. The Bulldogs responded with a long touchdown drive, aided by miscues from the Longhorns, and then stole a possession with a surprise onside kick and put the game out of reach. It was embarrassing and ugly for Texas in the 35-10.<\/p>\n
Kirby Smart has Steve Sarkisian\u2019s number<\/p>\n
For the third time in three games, the group in red out-coached the group in burnt orange. The Texas offense was cooking and keeping them in the game, playing complementary football in closing the gap to 14-10. Two fourth-down conversions turned into a Georgia touchdown, and then Kirby Smart dialed up the first successful onside kick of his tenure in Athens to steal a possession and put the game away. Texas moved the ball well on a few drives, but penalties and mistakes led to the Longhorns going six consecutive drives without scoring a point.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t just the Georgia defense that got the best of Texas; from the opening whistle, the offensive game plan by the Bulldogs took advantage of the lack of defensive aggression from the Lonhgorns. Once Texas adjusted and started to pressure Georgia quarterback Gunner Stockton, they used motion and misdirection to confuse the Texas secondary, resulting in two easy touchdowns for the Bulldogs.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re watching the box score, Arch Manning turned in a relatively pedestrian game, but the box score doesn\u2019t tell the whole story \u2014 Manning operated the offense well for the majority of the game, while his receivers did him little favors.<\/p>\n
Ryan Wingo, who seems to be WR1 on the team, had a back-breaking first-half drop that would have extended a drive, the only drop he was credited with. That drop ended the streak of four consecutive completions that Manning started the game with. Wingo also missed on a diving catch in the second half that would have put Texas deep in Georgia territory. Instead, wide receiver DeAndre Moore Jr. and tight end Jordan Washington followed his diving catch with a pair of drops that ended a once-promising drive.<\/p>\n
The Texas ground attack did little to help its quarterback, both by lack of production and lack of opportunity to do so. The Horns ran their backs just 10 times in the game for 40 total yards and finished the game with 23 total rushing yards. That\u2019s the lowest total since the 24-7 loss to TCU in 2017, Tom Herman\u2019s first season on the Forty Acres.<\/p>\n
The defense needs answers<\/p>\n
Pete Kwiatkowski\u2019s unit struggled to get stops early, and when they adjusted, so did Georgia.<\/p>\n
Texas played soft and allowed Georgia to take advantage of space underneath both in the pass and the running game. When the defense adjusted and put its secondary on more of an island, miscommunications and blown assignments let the Bulldogs offense spark big plays and put the Longhorns away. Both young contributors and senior leaders struggled with communication and even simple fundamentals to put Texas on its heels and put the game away. The Longhorns need to find some answers as they close out the last two weeks of the season, hoping to salvage what they can of the rest of this season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At one point, it looked like the No. 5 Texas Longhorns were going to make it yet another…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9488,27,29,536,28],"class_list":["post-51689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-general","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-longhorns-football","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51689","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=51689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}