The Texas Longhorns (8-3, 5-2 SEC) were the runaway favorite to win the 2025 College Football Playoff this preseason. Now, even with a win over Texas A&M this weekend, they’re likely not going to crack the CFP bracket. This has, by default, made them one of the country’s most disappointing teams.
People expected Texas to light up scoreboards on offense and shut down its opposition on defense. The defense held its end of the bargain for much of the year, but the offense lagged behind. Then, after trailing Mississippi State 38-21 in the fourth quarter back in October, it woke up. Greg McElroy believes the Longhorns’ offense we’ve seen since then would have changed the tenor of their campaign.
“Arch and the Texas offense will be the great ‘what if’ of the season… you feel like there’s been some significant growth for Texas’ offense as the season has gone along,” McElroy said on the Always College Football podcast. “If this offense were with us for the first 6, 7, 8 games, our impressions of Texas would be very, very different.”
Texas averaged 16.8 points per game in its first 4 matchups with Power 4 foes. Its defense allowed just 15.5 points per game in those contests. Since then, the offense has scored — and the defense has allowed — 35.3 points per game.
If the offense we’ve seen in the second half of the season had paired up with the defense we saw in the first half of the year, the Longhorns would probably be a CFP lock. Instead, they’re merely trying to play spoiler for Texas A&M’s undefeated season on Friday night (7:30 p.m. ET, ABC).
