3 reasons why the Texas Longhorns will return to the College Football Playoff
Published:
Despite playing its most complete game of the season against Sam Houston this weekend, Texas dropped to No. 10 in the AP Poll and remained at No. 7 in the Coaches Poll. With the nonconference part of the schedule complete, many people around the nation are down on the Texas Longhorns due to the lackluster play of Arch Manning, their inconsistent production on offense and the overall lack of discipline they’ve displayed by racking up nearly 9 penalties a game.
Although the Longhorns have a lot of work to do to become the team many people thought they could be in the preseason, it is way too early to count Texas out of the College Football Playoff at this point. Here are 3 big reasons Texas will make the Playoff for the third-consecutive season.
1. A Championship-Level Defense
As much criticism as Texas’s offense has faced, the defense should get just as much, if not more, praise as they’ve played at an elite level in every game this season, including their season-opening loss to Ohio State. Through 4 games, the Longhorns’ defense is only allowing 7.7 points per game while holding opponents to a very respectable 212 total yards a game.
Thanks to their consistent play, the Longhorns defense is ranked second overall in the SEC, behind only Oklahoma, and ranks in the top 4 for total yards allowed per game, sacks and interceptions. In the big picture, all these stats might be meaningless due to the level of competition, but they do set the tone for SEC play, which starts in Week 6 at Florida.
No matter if you are Florida, Oklahoma, Georgia, Texas A&M or any other future opponent of Texas, you know coming in you must keep the Longhorns under 20 points just to compete with them. If you think that’s an exaggeration, all one must look at is this key fact — since joining the SEC in 2024, Texas has scored 20 or more points in 16 games and has won all 16 games.
With every SEC opponent on the schedule except Vanderbilt and Texas A&M, who both come to Austin, bringing suspect offenses to the party, Texas can easily ride its championship-caliber defense back to the Playoff promised land.
2. Everybody Texas needs to beat is on the schedule
A blessing and a curse of playing in the SEC is that, every Saturday, odds are you’re going to play against a Top 25 opponent. For Texas, this is exactly what the doctor ordered as their schedule allows them to realistically stay in the college football playoff hunt just like they did last season.
Currently 4 of the Longhorns’ 8 SEC opponents are ranked in the Top 20, with Oklahoma, Georgia and Texas A&M each ranked in the Top 10, ahead of them. Thanks to this difficult schedule, the path for Texas to get into the Playoff is very direct and simple.
They must run the gauntlet of games against opponents outside of the Top 10 and find a way to sweep their rivalry games against Oklahoma and A&M or split their rivalry series and find a way to take down Georgia in Athens for the first time in program history. No matter if your are a Texas supporter or hater, the Longhorns still control their destiny. Will it be easy? No. But the path is certainly still there.
3. Steve Sarkisian is a good bet to get the offense back on track
To date, Texas has only played in 9 SEC games and has won every one of them except the 2 losses to Georgia last season. The offense is struggling this year, sure, but Steve Sarkisian‘s track record of play-calling prowess must still be taken into account.
After learning under the great Nick Saban in 2019 and 2020, Sark has a knack for staying a step or 2 ahead of most of the SEC’s talented defensive coordinators. In big road wins against Vanderbilt, Arkansas and Texas A&M last season, Sark’s play calling directly led to victories as he kept all 3 teams off balance most of the game which led to Texas being able to pull through and grab its 3 biggest road wins in SEC action.
With Manning improving while developing his dynamic skill set, Sark’s knack for calling great games which turn into big wins will play a role in whether or not the Longhorns grab their third-consecutive Playoff berth.
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.
