Greg McElroy predicts Texas to go over 9.5 wins

Everyone wants to see if this is the season where Texas is officially back or not. Many are high on Steve Sarkisian’s squad coming into the year and among them is ESPN’s Greg McElroy.

McElroy looked at Texas’ win total of 9.5 during a segment of ‘Always College Football’ on Monday. He recognizes that several other people have already hopped on the bandwagon when it comes to the Longhorns. Even so, he does see several reasons to, especially considering how many close games they ended up losing in 2022.

“The Texas Longhorns? They come in at 9.5,” McElroy said. “Everybody and their brother is hot on the Longhorns this year, right? So hot.”

“Think about where they were last year. How close they were in so many games? Lost five games last year all by one score. And you think about a couple of those games? They had some leads that they just couldn’t hang on to,” explained McElroy. “Think about the Texas Tech game, think about the Oklahoma State game. They had significant leads in both games. They just could not hold on.”

Texas went 8-5 last fall with each of their losses coming by no more than seven points. Two of them were out of reach as TCU and Washington held leads for a large portion of their matchups with the Longhorns.

However, Alabama won on a go-ahead field goal after Texas had a two-point lead in the last minute and a half, the Red Raiders came back from 10 down in Lubbock to hit a game-winning field goal in overtime, and the Cowboys came back from 14 back in Stillwater.

Pair that with the Longhorn’s Top-30 finishes on both sides of the football and McElroy sees optimism on The 40 Acres. With the direction that they’re moving in, and moving in quickly, McElroy believes that they’ll exceed that 9.5 win total and reach double-digit wins for the second time in the last 14 years.

“A big boost is coming for the Longhorns this year. I am very optimistic about it. I think they’re a Top-10 football team coming into the season,” McElroy said. “A lot of it has to do with the progress made offensively, progress made on the front seven defensively. But, given the strides made from ’21 to ’22, I think they’re going to continue to ramp it up. I’m taking the over on 9.5.”

As he went through the schedule, McElroy has Texas finishing at 11-1 with the sole loss coming at Alabama. He realizes that’s lofty, especially with how the Longhorns have crumbled under expectations in years past, but, in the end, he’s all in on the ‘Horns reaching 10 wins or more in 2023.

“Texas? I’m taking the over. I really think this team is a 10-win football team,” said McElroy. “That’s the floor. Maybe I’m drinking the Kool-Aid. I might very well be. Texas has let us down in the past. They might very well do so again in the future. But I will take that risk”