The Texas Longhorns are heading into week seven of the 2020 college football season. The second bye week of the season all wrapped up and the team will start focusing on their next game on Oct. 24 against Baylor. If the Bears are able to field a team then they will host their second conference home game of the year. In their last home game they fell to Texas Christian 33-31.
As of right now they are looking up at most of the conference at 1-2 and 2-2 overall. The goals and aspirations haven’t changed for this football team despite two consecutive conference losses. All three of the teams sitting atop the standings have yet to play Texas. Oklahoma State is up next after the Baylor game on Oct. 31. That will be a huge game in Stillwater, Oklahoma for both teams.
The Longhorns will face off against Iowa State on Nov. 27 and then Kansas State a week later to close out the season. The Wildcats just lost their starting quarterback Skylar Thompson for the season so that might put a damper in their plans. Backup Will Howard has looked like a bright spot in limited action.
It has looked bleak and gloomy at times but Texas still has an opportunity to do the unthinkable. It would likely need to be a 6-0 run by the Longhorns to have a shot at playing for the conference title. The jury is still out on Oklahoma State despite their perfect record. OSU has beaten Kansas and West Virginia. They will likely look like a much better team when Spencer Sanders finally returns.
Iowa State and Kansas State defeated Oklahoma on back-to-back Saturdays. They have combined to go 6-0 after dreadful opening game losses to teams in the Sun Belt Conference. Should Kansas State stumble after losing their quarterback, it could be that Iowa State is Texas biggest competition.
For the Longhorns this year they need to get in front of two of these teams. Iowa State and Oklahoma State will matchup on Oct. 24 so one of them will suffer their first conference loss. That would mean that Texas would need to beat them to secure the head-to-head tiebreaker. The Longhorns would need to beat Kansas State and need another team to beat them as well.
Likely the most realistic scenario involves Texas finishing 8-2 and earning a bid to play for the Big 12 Championship. Winning six in a row seems like a long shot but this team has done it before under Tom Herman. In 2018 after dropping the opener to Maryland, the Longhorns won six in a row. It started with Tulsa and ended on a loss to Oklahoma State.
Texas will need to get Heisman worthy play from their quarterback Sam Ehlinger. He has been off to a hot start but he needs to play better. He is currently the conference’s ninth-ranked quarterback in completion percentage. The running game will need to be more involved. Right now Ehlinger is the leading rusher on the team. He has 242 yards and five touchdowns. He rushed for seven in all of 2019.
Defensively they need to be more consistent with tackling. In the Big 12 Conference no player has missed more tackles than DeMarvion Overshown. He needs to be more consistent. The Longhorns also need more of a pass rush presence, it starts with Joseph Ossai and the front three. This is the best path for success on that side of the ball.
The Longhorns have everything in front of them. If they are as close as Tom Herman states each week, now is the perfect time to fix it. If they can execute to their standards, then there is no reason to believe they can’t make a run. The question now is have they given you any reason to believe that they can?