No. 16\u00a0Texas finally has its offense clicking. It’s the defense that is now causing concerns ahead of a huge rivalry game vs. No. 3 Texas A&M with slim playoff hopes on the line.<\/p>\n
A unit that carried\u00a0Arch Manning\u00a0and Texas through the first half of the season is now giving up big plays and big points. Texas (8-3, 5-2 Southeastern Conference, No. 17 CFP) has surrendered at least 30 points in the last four games.<\/p>\n
The Longhorns will look to clean it up against a challenging opponent in the undefeated Aggies (11-0, 7-0). Texas A&M quarterback\u00a0Marcel Reed\u00a0has emerged as a late-season Heisman Trophy contender as he engineers and offense that can grind down opponents with a bullish run game or carve them up with speedy receivers KC Concepcion and Mario Craver.<\/p>\n
The Aggies are chasing a berth in the SEC title game. The Longhorns need a win not just for state pride, but to keep alive any hope of making the College Football Playoff field for the third consecutive season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re chasing, trying to make big plays,\u201d Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said Monday of his defense, noting several games worth of broken assignments that have led to big plays and touchdowns.<\/p>\n
In last week’s\u00a052-37 win over Arkansas, the last-place team in the SEC, Texas allowed points on the Razorbacks’ first four drives. In the previous two games, it was fourth-quarter collapses as Vanderbilt and Georgia both scored 21 points in the final period.<\/p>\n
The Commodores scored 21 points in a rally that ended after a failed onside kick in the final minute. Georgia scored 21 points to turn a close game into a blowout that put Texas\u2019 playoff hopes on life support.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a lot of veteran players who have played some high-level football for us,” Sarkisian said about some of the mistakes.<\/p>\n
Senior safety Michael Taaffe, a preseason All-America selection, owned up to that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m definitely one of those guys,\u201d Taaffe said. \u201cJust do your job, nobody needs to be superhuman. A lot of times we hurt ourselves more than the offense hurts us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reed and the Aggies have put plenty of hurt on opposing defenses. He recovered from a dismal first half against South Carolina to lead a second-half comeback for the ages as Texas A&M rallied from a 27-point halftime deficit to win 31-30.<\/p>\n
Texas bottled up Reed last year when the Longhorns won 17-7 and didn’t allow the Aggies an offensive touchdown. But Texas players know they face a better, more mature Reed on Friday. The Aggies rank third in the SEC in scoring nearly 39 points per game.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Reed) scrambles to pass. And when he\u2019s scrambling you\u2019ve (still) got to cover 8-10 seconds,\u201d Taaffe said. \u201cTheir receivers are really explosive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reed has been sacked just nine times this season. And Texas has struggled of late against a run of dual-threat quarterbacks. Vanderbilt’s Diego Pavia, Georgia’s Gunner Stockton and Arkansas’ Taylen Green all moved the ball well against Texas.<\/p>\n
Taaffe said he got to know Reed when they made a commercial together for a hamburger restaurant chain.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe quarterback at Texas A&M and the safety at Texas, you don\u2019t really want them to be friends,\u201d Taaffe said. “But it was really hard not to like him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Texas played last week without injured linebacker and leading tackler Anthony Hill Jr., an elite sideline-to-sideline defender who also has four sacks and two interceptions. His status to return from a hand injury was still unclear Monday.<\/p>\n
Texas will play the first half Friday night without linebacker Ty\u2019Anthony Smith, who drew a targeting penalty in the second half against Arkansas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No. 16\u00a0Texas finally has its offense clicking. It’s the defense that is now causing concerns ahead of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,3042,29,537,28],"class_list":{"0":"post-64706","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-texas","9":"tag-texas-am","10":"tag-texas-headlines","11":"tag-texas-longhorns","12":"tag-texas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64706","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=64706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}