The fate of Texas’ season is hanging in the balance, as any hope of reaching the Big 12 championship either will continue or end after Saturday’s game against Baylor.
After dropping two consecutive games to the Oklahoma schools, the Longhorns are fifth in the conference standings, and badly need to pull off a win against Baylor in order to help themselves stay in contention. Texas does not really have a clear path to the Big 12 Championship, as they need to win out, and also rely on a couple other teams to lose in order to shake the conference up.
Iowa State helped them out last week by beating Oklahoma State, but if Texas does not beat Baylor this week, that win does nothing for them.
The Longhorns do not match up well with Baylor, as the Bears are home to the No. 9 rushing offense in the nation averaging 240 yards rushing per game, while Texas has been giving up a horrendous 200 rushing yards per game. The Longhorns gave up at least 200 yards rushing in all of their losses this season. In their four wins, Texas has not allowed an offense to rush for 200 yards.
If Texas cannot take advantage of the two weeks to prepare for Baylor’s outside zone running game, they will quickly find themselves with three straight losses and out of contention for the Big 12 title.
It will take a huge performance from the defense, and also Texas’ offense who looked abysmal in the loss to Oklahoma State. If Texas needed anything from Casey Thompson these past couple weeks, it was for him to get back to full strength, because what we saw against Oklahoma State looked like a completely different player that lacked confidence and accuracy.
Taking everything into consideration, it is time for my weekly bold predictions for Texas’ matchup against Baylor.