Despite coming into the Lone Star Showdown as underdogs at home for the first time this season, Texas was able to put together one of its best halves of the season while upsetting in-state rival Texas A&M, 27-17.
As a result of their biggest win of the season, Texas keeps its slim College Football Playoff chances alive (even if those hopes basically ended with the rankings on Tuesday night) and can only sit back and wait for results from this weekend to see if it will return to the CFP for the third consecutive year. By taking down the Aggies, the Longhorns finished up the home part of their schedule undefeated for the second time in 3 seasons and have now won 20 of their last 21 regular season games at Darrell K. Royal–Texas Memorial Stadium, dating back to 2022.
Here are 3 reasons the Longhorns were able to beat the Aggies for the second consecutive season.
1. Texas’s zone defense, led by Michael Taaffe, delivered
Despite being one of the best units in the nation, the Texas defense has also been its Achilles heel at times this fall as it has struggled multiple times on big stages. In the 4 games heading into its showdown with A&M, Texas had given up 15 explosive plays of 20 yards or more despite going 3-1 in the same stretch.
As result, many national analysts expected Texas to have hard time containing Marcel Reed and the explosive passing attack of A&M.
Enter Texas senior defensive back Michael Taaffe, who despite struggling at times since returning from a thumb injury, was able to make the defensive play of the night. With 3 minutes left in the game and counting and A&M trying to make the game a 1-score game, Taaffe, while in zone coverage was able to come over the top of A&M star wideout Mario Carver to pick off Reed to all but end the Aggies’ realistic chances of making their first-ever SEC Championship Game.
The pick was the former walk-on senior’s second of the season and the second-consecutive year Taaffe was able to pick off Reed in the Lone Star Showdown. With Taaffe as its unquestioned leader, the much-maligned Texas secondary was able to hold Reed and the A&M passing game to its lowest passing total of the season as Reed was only able to muster 180 yards in the Aggies’ biggest game of the season.
Thanks to Taaffe being the over-the-top safety valve in Texas’s Cover 2 zone scheme along with its pressure up front, Reed was picked off again on the final play of Taaffe’s career at DKR to secure his legacy as a Texas Lone Star Showdown hero.
2. Quintrevion Wisner and the Texas run game produced their best game of the season
No matter if you blamed the offensive line, which has been in a constant shuffle all season, or the running backs themselves, Texas’s running game has been abysmal all season long. The Longhorns’ running game has been so bad they entered the Lone Star Showdown averaging 3.8 yards per attempt and no player on the roster had been over 100 yards the entire season.
Unfortunately for A&M, Quintrevion Wisner changed all that, as the man who many felt would be the lead back for Texas in the preseason produced his best game of the season and third-best of his career against the Aggies.
With Texas in sputter mode on the heels of another underwhelming offensive half, Wisner broke a 48-yard run on his first carry of the second half and the Longhorns’ first offensive play from scrimmage. The run was Wisner’s longest this season and jump-started Texas’s offensive explosion in the half as it outscored A&M 24-7.
When the dust settled, Wisner averaged 8.6 yards a carry on 19 carries with 108 of his season-high 155 yards coming in the second half. Like Taaffe, this is the second consecutive year Wisner has victimized the Aggies as he rushed for a career-high 186 yards on 33 carries in last season’s Lone Star Showdown victory.
3. Texas produced more explosive plays than A&M
A big hallmark of A&M’s offense this season has been the explosive plays it consistently creates. The Aggies came into the game averaging 4.4 explosive plays a game having produced 44 total explosive plays through 10 games. Unfortunately for A&M, Texas’s defense was able to rise to the challenge as it held A&M to a season-low 2 explosive plays. Texas’s offense produced 4 explosives in the second half alone.
The Longhorns simply made more big game-breaking plays than the Aggies for the second consecutive season. Regardless of if they make the CFP or not, 2025 has not been a complete disaster for the Longhorns like some might think.
Nobody can take away this victory that ended A&M’s perfect season, or the fact Texas is the first team since LSU ran the table in 2019 to win 3 games against teams ranked in the top 10. Texas is now 6-0 in its SEC rivalries over the last 2 seasons, which is nothing to downplay in the SEC.
Kendrick E. Johnson writes for various national outlets such as High School on SI, Yardbarker, ESPN Andscape and MMA Weekly. He is an independent print journalist, sports television reporter and multimedia journalist who has covered the NBA Finals, NFL, NCAA football, MLB, NHL, WWE and over 75 world championship boxing and UFC Fights nationally. Johnson has also covered every prep sport possible in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and all across the great state of Texas. He’s done numerous 1-on-1 interviews with some of the biggest names and personalities in sports from Kobe Bryant, Stephen Curry and Shaq on the basketball side to Jon Jones, Canelo Alvarez and Terence Crawford on the combat sports side and John Cena, Jey and Jimmy Uso and Charlotte Flair in WWE.
