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Texas has 3 players in the top 10 of a new ranking by ESPN on Wednesday that examines the top-50 players in this year’s College Football Playoff.
Texas didn’t win the SEC title, losing a heartbreaker in overtime to Georgia, and because of that the Longhorns failed to earn a first-round bye for the College Football Playoff.
They settled for a No. 5 seed and a first-round showdown this Saturday afternoon with 12th-seeded Clemson in Austin. So, Texas has to play its way into the quarterfinals. But all of this hardly means the Longhorns are some plucky underdog that’s just hoping to make a Playoff run.
ESPN’s ranking of the top 50 players in this year’s Playoff shows just how much talent the Longhorns have. Offensive lineman Kelvin Banks Jr. was the highest-ranked Texas player, coming in at No. 5.
The other 2 Texas stars in ESPN’s top 10 are senior defensive back Jahdae Barron at No. 7 and sophomore linebacker Anthony Hill Jr. at No. 9. That’s a lot of high-end talent on 1 roster for a team that doesn’t even have that coveted first-round Playoff bye.
The SEC only had 4 total players in the top 10, including those 3 from Texas. Tennessee running back Dylan Sampson was the only other SEC star to crack the top 10, coming in at No. 8.
Should Texas beat Clemson and advance to the quarterfinals, the Longhorns would face No. 4 seed Arizona State in the Peach Bowl on New Year’s Day.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
