Welcome to Bevo’s Fake Nuts, our weekly column on the Texas Longhorns.
Another year of Texas football is done, and it went decidedly better than the last one. No children were bitten by pet monkeys. There were no hilarious collapses, let alone three of them in a row. The Longhorns smoked Oklahoma for what felt like the first time in forever. The controversy over the minstrel song died down. It was a great step forward, but at the same time…
Texas won eight games this year.
That’s it.
It was only Steve Sarkisian’s second year, and it was only Quinn Ewers’s first, and I know there were reasons to fire Tom Herman, but we aren’t yet at the point where this program has matched Herman’s average record, which was 8.0-4.5. We’re at 8-5, still. In a single season. By Herman’s second year, Texas was winning the Sugar Bowl. That’s not an unreasonable comparison, given the talent in the cupboard with each transition.
This doesn’t spell doom for Texas going forward. Nothing of the sort. Texas played a tough schedule, lost a lot of close games, and has a great chance of opening next year as the Big 12 favorite.
It does, though, open up a dangerous door. Two of them, really. There’s the customary complacence door (never tell Texas it’s good, things never go well when Texas thinks it’s good), and then there’s the new door, which is the Arch Manning door.
Quinn Ewers, with two years of high-level training and one year of high-level play under his belt, a former top recruit himself, is probably a better quarterback option in 2023 than Arch Manning. But good luck telling that to the Texas media sphere. Good luck telling that to Texas fans.
Ewers didn’t have a great year. This is true. But the touted prospect’s medium season doesn’t necessarily point to Manning as the answer. It points against Ewers, sure, but it points against Manning as well. It points towards Manning also struggling to learn the ropes, because being a high-level college quarterback is hard stuff. Manning will get there, given time, but the pressure is materializing to throw Manning into the fire, and while I don’t think that stuff affects Steve Sarkisian, it sure seems to reach the players, given how bad the play always gets in this program once there’s a hint of tumult in the air. Which quarterback plays isn’t the bigger problem. The bigger problem is that if the worse one isn’t playing, the players are going to be hearing about it, and focus is already allegedly a natural problem here—a bigger problem at Texas than it is at Alabama for all sorts of reasons.
Texas’s trajectory remains good. I’ll concede that. But the path to a shitshow is clear and open, and once the shitshow starts, it’s hard to stop it. The leash from decision makers isn’t long. The Manning family didn’t go looking for a mess. There’s a lot of kindling lying around.
