Following his team\u2019s win over previously unbeaten Texas A&M on Nov. 28, Texas coach Steve Sarkisian lobbied as hard as he could for the Longhorns to get in the College Football Playoff, touting their wins and overall resume.<\/p>\n
But when the Playoff field was revealed on Sunday during the selection show, Texas was hardly mentioned<\/a>, not even making the bracket graphic as one of the first two teams out (the Longhorns were the third team out, behind Notre Dame and BYU).<\/p>\n After two consecutive trips to the CFP, the Longhorns entered the 2025 season with national championship expectations as the No. 1 team in both major polls and a quarterback, Arch Manning, who was the preseason Heisman Trophy favorite. But a 9-3 record kept them out of the tournament, and instead, they\u2019re now headed to the Citrus Bowl to play Michigan.<\/p>\n Why did the preseason No. 1 team fall short of the CFP? Here are some of the pitfalls that plagued Texas in 2025.<\/p>\n A bumpy first two months<\/p>\n One point Sarkisian hammered in his case for making the 12-team field was a claim that Texas\u2019 14-7 season-opening loss at Ohio State was holding it back from the CFP. Had the Longhorns played an easier game and not challenged themselves by going on the road to play the defending champs, he said, they could be 10-2 and a shoe-in for the bracket.<\/p>\n That\u2019s probably true if the rest of the results remained the same, though Vanderbilt being left out at 10-2 shows that record is not quite an automatic for an SEC team. But the reality is, the Longhorns\u2019 play for chunks of September and October, beyond simply Ohio State, hurt their case.<\/p>\n Two weeks after the Ohio State loss, the Longhorns labored to score points in a 27-10 win over UTEP, an overmatched team that finished 2-10.<\/p>\n Texas\u2019 29-21 loss on Oct. 4 at Florida, a team that finished 4-8, hurt its resume the most. The Longhorns trailed the Gators by 15 for most of the fourth quarter, before scoring a touchdown with 3:20 left and taking possession with a chance to tie with 55 seconds to go. After that defeat, the Longhorns had played five games but went 0-for-2 against Power 4 opponents, and it sent them tumbling out of the Associated Press top 25.<\/p>\n A 23-6 win the following week over rival Oklahoma \u2014 ranked No. 6 at the time \u2014 got Texas back into the poll, but having to go to overtime in the next two weeks to beat Kentucky (which finished 5-7) and Mississippi State (also 5-7) weren\u2019t exactly resume boosters, either. Although the Longhorns were 6-2 at that point, they didn\u2019t feel at all like a Playoff team based on how they played for most of the first two months. Of their first six wins, only one was over a team that finished the season with a winning record.<\/p>\n An inconsistent offense<\/p>\n Addressing the various issues on the Texas offense in the 2025 season was a bit like playing Whac-A-Mole.<\/p>\n Offensive line play was one of the biggest culprits of the Longhorns\u2019 offensive struggles. After losing four of five starters, including three NFL Draft picks, that young unit took a while to find its footing.<\/p>\n In October alone \u2014 which included the Florida, Kentucky and Mississippi State games \u2014 Texas allowed a 46.2 percent pressure rate, which was fifth worst in the entire FBS that month, according to Pro Football Focus. The O-line performed better in November, but its 38 percent pressure rate allowed kept it ranked 121st in the 136-team FBS.<\/p>\n Some wondered if Texas should have taken an offensive line transfer or two. Sarkisian has yet to do so in his five seasons at Texas, in part because it recruited at a high level. The Longhorns at least kicked the idea around \u2014 one Power 4 personnel director said the Longhorns tried to woo one of his starting linemen to Austin in the offseason \u2014 but Texas ultimately stood pat, trusting the development of the young linemen it had.<\/p>\n Line play issues also led to struggles in the running game. Sarkisian\u2019s offenses have had a 1,000-yard rusher every season with him as the play caller since 2009. That streak ended this season, as leading rusher Quintrevion Wisner finished with just 597 yards. Wisner missed three games because of injury, CJ Baxter also missed time with injury and sophomore Jerrick Gibson left the team at midseason. Texas could never quite replicate the backfield prowess it had early in the Sarkisian era, when Bijan Robinson, Roschon Johnson and Jonathon Brooks punished defenses.<\/p>\n Manning also had his own growing pains in his first year as the full-time starter. Accuracy issues plagued him early on, and his mechanics and footwork were inconsistent, too. Whenever Manning got sped up in the pocket, things tended to go haywire with how he saw the field or his ball placement.<\/p>\n But as the season wore on, Manning got better. After the Kentucky game, he threw for at least 300 yards and three touchdowns in three of his next four games. His accuracy improved. He wasn\u2019t immune to mistakes, as stretches against Georgia and Texas A&M showed. The win over A&M in the season finale was, in many ways, a microcosm of his season: a slow start with a mostly strong finish.<\/p>\n Lastly, Texas\u2019 receiving corps, while solid, was not to the level of recent years. Drops were an issue \u2014 Texas had 21 this season and a 5.7 percent drop rate, according to PFF, both of which were more than the average Power 4 team. Stanford transfer Emmett Mosley missed the first four games with an injury. Cal transfer tight end Jack Endries wasn\u2019t quite as impactful as his predecessors, Gunnar Helm and Ja\u2019Tavion Sanders. Ryan Wingo, DeAndre Moore and Parker Livingstone are all talented, but they have not reached the level that recent Texas receiver alumni did, like Xavier Worthy, Adonai Mitchell or Matthew Golden.<\/p>\n A disjointed Playoff selection process<\/p>\n Sarkisian admitted Sunday, after the Longhorns accepted a bid to the Citrus Bowl,<\/a> that Texas must simply control what it can by winning more games.<\/p>\n