No 1. Texas 20 No. 14 Tennessee 17: Five Observations and Sunday Chat
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Alright, I’ve had some time to marinate on this one since the game concluded and I think I am finally ready to pull the ripcord on my thoughts about how this game played out in Knoxville on Saturday afternoon.
The most important that came out it was that the Longhorns came out of the contest with a win and now have a bye week to get healthy before heading to the Cotton Bowl to see their longtime rival in Oklahoma. Outside of that though, there were plenty of things that certainly were a bit curious, concerning, and some that were downright frustrating to watch in real time.
Texas managed to come out of this 4-0, but they tried like hell to give it away in the final minutes after being in control of the game for majority of the contest.
Lets get into it.
Jim Knowles Gets The Best Of Steve Sarkisian And His Offense
Tennessee defensive coordinator had his defensive group up and ready to play for this one. If that name sounds familiar, Knowles was the defensive coordinator at Ohio State back in 2024 when Texas squared off with the Buckeyes in the College Football Playoff.
The Longhorns were competitive in that game and had some offensive success, but just like on Saturday it was an absolute slog for stretches and the run game was almost snuffed out entirely making the Texas offense practically one dimensional. The Tennessee defense gave the Texas problems all day long upfront with the way they were were bringing pressure from different angles and the Texas offense never really got a firm grip on what they were doing. On top of that, the Tennessee defense was able to get good penetration and almost seemed to always guess right on run blitzes that resulted in Texas playing from behind the sticks often. Raleek Brown was the primary ball carrier on the day after Hollywood Smothers (who was removed from the injury report) suited up for the game, but never took a single snap.
Brown as the primary back only resulted 67 yards on 17 carries, but he had two incredibly important touchdown runs that proved to be the difference. Both scores came at opposite ends of the contest with the first coming on the first drive of the game and the second one coming in the 4th quarter, where it looked like Texas had shut the door on Tennessee. Outside of Brown, Texas ball carriers produced 6 total yards on the ground. Credit to Tennessee for taking the fight to the Texas offensive front all day, as it kept them in the game.
Speaking of Brown.. had no idea he pulled off a Saquon reverse hurdle when I was watching this in real time.
Alright lets talk about it:
This happened not just once…
BUT TWICE! I have no clue what is going on with Arch Manning, but he now has THREE illegal forward passes in the past two games. I have seen this happen occasionally to a quarterback over the course of a season, because shit happens sometimes when the live bullets are flying. But this has officially become concerning to me, because not only is it showing a lack of awareness it continues to highlight that he is being indecisive and is having a hard time pulling the trigger out there. Seeing him do stuff like this along with him not seeing the field well tells me that the mental processing is still lacking for him and no matter how you feel about Arch that is not a great indicator for a guy who is in his 4th year in the offense. His overall stat line was awful and he was under fire all damn day (sacked six times and pressured plenty), but man you can still just tell that he still has some developing to do at this point in his career.
Has time here on this play. Up until then he had been fine passing the ball. Why was this ball forced down the field? Coleman was essentially bracketed and the defensive back was stacked on top of him already. This is an unforced error and on second and five in plus territory you didn’t need to be this aggressive.
Jordan Reid is one of my favorite NFL Draft follows in the social media spaces. He calls it like he sees it and isn’t going to let the helmet logo influence his evaluations or takes. I am completely aligned with him with where I see Arch heading into the bye week. He looks like a guy that needs to come back for his final year, and that isn’t the type of trajectory we were expecting to see coming into this year. Texas put a lot of money into this roster this year. Especially on the offensive side of the ball. So far, they are falling short of expectations all things considered. That is a Steve Sarkisian problem. That is an Arch Manning problem. Both are true. Texas needs better from the entire offense and its play-caller.
You had Smothers out in this one, Cam Coleman got banged up at one point. 20 points was only barely enough because the Texas defense did some ungodly things to the Tennessee offense. We haven’t seen this group come close to playing their best football and that is both frustrating and maybe some reason for optimism.
We will see how things look coming out of the bye week.
To put a bow on this section, Jim Knowles has been a thorn in Sarkisian’s side the past two times they have matched up. Sark was fortunate to be able to get the win this time around.
We Saw Some Demigod S*** From Colin Simmons and the Texas Defense
Listen here, folks. I have watched a lot of football in my day and seen some pretty nasty performances from a defender. But what Colin Simmons did to the Tennessee offense on Saturday was so criminal that I’m surprised that it is not considered to be illegal in some states.
FIVE sacks (with one wiped away due to a penalty on Zina Umeozulu) FIVE tackles for a loss, a forced fumble, and and another quarterback hurry. Excuse my language, but WHAT THE ACUAL F***?!? Someone had the NCAA Football difficulty sliders turned all the way down to Walk-On. Because I don’t know how else to describe what number one in Burnt Orange did on Saturday. The closest thing in recent memory I can compare this to is what Myles Garrett did to the Ravens last year when he had four sacks.
Simmons tied the Texas program record for sacks in a game. A record that has been on the books for 36 years. He was a facemask penalty away from tying the FBS single game record. Simmons entered the matchup on Saturday with two sacks on the year. He left with seven. That number will put him at the top of the leaderboard in the entire country.
Absolute superstar effort from him. And just so we are clear. The sack celebration that extended a Tennessee drive was elite levels of stupid. But when you are able to drop a five sack performance, I think I can find room in my heart to forgive you.
Okay, now that I have gushed about Simmons, let me give the rest of the defense some love. Simmons accounted for 5 of the defense’s 10 sacks on Saturday. Not a typo, folks. TEN SACKS from the Texas defensive unit. They absolutely terrorized Faizon Brandon and the Tennessee offensive line all damn day and made it hard to just function on a basic level. Simmons will unquestionably grab majority of the headlines, but Lance Jackson, Hero Kanu, and Rasheem Biles all showed up with blue chip efforts as well. Lance Jackson might have put together his best game as a Longhorn and was constantly flashing to the point that Herbie was gushing about him on the broadcast. Kanu was dominant as well and was an absolute wagon to deal with on the interior all game long.
The Texas defensive effort was clinical for about 95% of this contest. The other five percent was whatever the hell happened on that second to last Tennessee possession, where they got super conservative and Bo Mascoe allowed an underthrown ball to be completed for a touchdown. Prior to that score, the Texas defense hadn’t allowed touchdown in 9 quarters of play.
This unit is plenty good enough to go win a championship with. The people who questioned if Will Muschamp can still call a defense look awfully silly through four weeks of play.
Texas Has Special Teams Problems
I’m about to take a blowtorch to Jeff Banks’ entire operation except for the field goal team, who is actually perfect so far this year.
Outside of that the special teams has been a borderline disaster for Texas this year. They can’t block on the return teams, Mac Chiumento was not great on Saturday and also kicked a line drive to Qua Moss that led to a special teams touchdown, they are constantly being flagged for penalties that kills any chance of creating an impact in the return game, and on top of that Gianni Spetic pulled a kickoff out of bounds down the home stretch after being a touchback machine up until then.
Oh, and why the f*** is Ryan Wingo on the hands team?!?
Listen, I love Wingo. He’s a great kid, teammate, and player. But him on the HANDS team had disaster written all over it from the jump. We have seen with our own eyes for two years now that he struggles being a natural hands catcher. Why is he out there in a situation where you know you need sure handed guys on that unit? It reminded me of the scene from the Waterboy when the kicker was eyeballing who he was going to target it before kicking the onside kick in the Bourbon Bowl.
I hear every year that Banks is a great special teams coach and is highly regarded in coaching circles, but his phase of the game right now is a net negative for this Texas team. I don’t want to hear a word about how good of a special teams coach he is until he gets his house in order. Ryan Niblett was an All-American last year as a return man, and we have not seen he or that unit come close to being impactful the way they were a year ago.
That’s a problem.
The Got Dang Penalty Problem Is Back
Yeah, this was the dumbest one of all, but I could have lived with this nonsense from Simmons had the penalties not piled up the way they did on Saturday. I commended this team for doing a better job in the penalty department over the first few weeks of the season, and on Saturday they were right back to looking like the teams from previous years when it comes to penalty problems.
ELEVEN penalties for 115 yards. When points are at a premium like they were on Saturday, gift wrapping that many penalty yards to a team that was fighting for lives offensively is downright criminal. This is the type of stuff that will get your ass beat at some point this year. You are fortunate that Tennessee wasn’t good enough on Saturday to make you pay for it.
Hell they still almost made you pay for it anyway.
We Still Haven’t Seen This Team Play A Complete Game
As frustrating as this team has been in stretches so far this year, they managed to make it to 4-0 heading into the bye with an opportunity to get a chance to get healthy before their annual rivalry game in Dallas. Get Smothers healthy, get Nick Townsend back, get guys like Justus Terry back in the game and in the mix. Those guys won’t fix the issues, but it helps give you some pieces to throw at the issues.
We have yet to see this team play a complete game across all three phases, and we know they are much more talented than what they have given us on Saturdays so far. The optimist in me says that this team has left plenty of money on the table through four weeks and is capable of so much more if they can find a way to get their act together in some regards.
The Texas defense has played some good football, but the offense and special teams unit have not played up to standard and with the stretch of play they are entering they will have to start scratching the surface, or they will be in a bind given who they have on the schedule.
4-0. They haven’t been perfect, but they rarely will be. You get a little more time this week to enjoy the win over the other UT given the bye week.
Once the bye week is behind us you know exactly what time it is. Hate Week will be upon us and them damn Sooners from north of the Red River will be looking to play spoiler with their season hopes already circling the drain following a throttling in Athens.
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