Can the Texas Longhorns follow the script to victory?

The No. 1 Texas Longhorns have played 360 minutes of football this season during their 6-0 journey to the top of the rankings. They’ve trailed for just 3:50 of those 360 minutes.

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That short stretch occurred late in the first quarter last Saturday against the Oklahoma Sooners. OU kicked a field goal to take a 3-0 advantage, and Texas scored a touchdown just a few minutes later to retake the lead and surge to a 34-3 win.

Playing with a lead seems like an extremely simple goal that all teams strive for every game. Teams want to have more points than their opponent in the beginning, the middle, and, most importantly, the end.

But Texas has been unique in creating and defending advantages this year. The Longhorns are one of three teams along with Indiana and Army who have allowed teams to have a lead on them for fewer than five minutes. To the credit of the Hoosiers and the Black Knights, they have not trailed at all in 2024.

Once Texas gets ahead, it does not look back. Mounting any sort of comeback against the Longhorn defense when Steve Sarkisian‘s offense surges out front has been impossible for opponents during the 2024 season.

While it may appear straight-forward, what are some of the specific reasons why playing with a lead is so critical?

“When you have the lead, you have all of your game plan at your disposal,” Sarkisian said Monday. “You can make the necessary adjustments because you can foreshadow and see what’s coming. When you’re playing from behind, you’re in a little bit more of a scramble mode. Sometimes, you have to scrap the original game plan. You have to go to your contingency plans. If this plan A didn’t work, you’ve got to go to plan B and plan C.”

Texas has been operating with plan A for most of the year, even when Arch Manning had to stand in for Quinn Ewers for a few games. So it should come as no surprise that the few minutes the Longhorns trailed Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl were the ones several players identified as the most adversity the team has been put through this season.

On Monday, Barryn Sorrell, Jaydon Blue, and Kelvin Banks all identified those 3:50 when the Longhorns were behind as the most adverse situation the Longhorns have faced this year. Banks also mentioned the moments before DeAndre Moore Jr. caught a 50-yard touchdown pass thrown by Manning against Mississippi State as another trying time for Texas this season.

There aren’t many other instances players could even think to identify on Monday as difficult from the 2024 season, and that’s been a testament to how well the Longhorns have played on both sides of the ball.

Texas is No. 7 in total offense and No. 11 in yards per play, among a number of other lofty statistical rankings.

Texas is also No. 1 in ESPN’s defensive stop rate, No. 1 in yards per play allowed, No. 1 in total defense, and No. 1 in scoring defense. Even when looking outside some raw statistics, Texas is the No. 2 team in adjusted stats like passing efficiency defense and advanced stats like defensive FEI.

Put simply, it’s been easy mode for UT for most of the season. And that ease creates difficulty for opponents that leads to them scraping significant portions of their pregame plans in efforts to tighten the contest. Those efforts have not found success.

“We try to get leads that we think have an opportunity to move the football and score,” Sarkisian said. “We try to play really sound defense. If we can get that lead, especially into the second half and it’s a multiple score lead, now you have to start to really throw the ball, which is something we wanted to get better at (defending) from a year ago. Now they have to go throw it. Now, let’s go rush the passer. Now we can affect the quarterback, create turnovers, and things.”

In six games this season, Texas has been able to build double-digit leads and alter how games were played. Here are the points in all six games when the Longhorns took at least a 10-point lead that never returned to single digits.

• Colorado State – 10:56 2Q
• Michigan – 8:24 2Q
• UTSA – 0:06 1Q
• Louisiana-Monroe – 5:28 1Q
• Mississippi State – 0:06 3Q
• Oklahoma – 2:21 Q2

“We’ve been fortunate that we’ve gotten to play that way all year long,” Sarkisian said. “That’s the ideal way. We have to be prepared for the other way too, because that day’s probably going to come at some point. We have to make sure that we’re more than equipped to handle that as well.”

Maybe even on Saturday against Georgia, a team with experience throwing best laid plans out to mount a comeback.

During their memorable battle with the Alabama Crimson Tide on September 28, Georgia trailed 30-7 at halftime. The Bulldogs surrendered four touchdowns to the Jalen Milroe-led offense, plus a safety late in the half.

The plan for Kirby Smart‘s team had to be altered posthaste.

“It changed fast, I can promise you that,” Smart said Thursday. “At halftime, there was a regroup point.

He’d later say. “Before the end of the half was when we acknowledged that we’ve got to gain every possession we can.”

Georgia used heroics from Carson Beck and company to tie the ballgame and even take the lead before heroics from Milroe and Ryan Williams gave the Tide the victory.

The Longhorns have forced opponents to scrap their gameplans early due to large deficits all year. On Saturday, an opponent who has succeeded in making up those margins comes to town.

If Texas is fortunate enough to build a lead, Georgia will have to alter their game script. The shoe could end up on the other foot, and Texas may need to utilize strategies it hasn’t deployed since the Sugar Bowl at the culmination of last season.

Or it could be a close game, an experience the Longhorns have yet to go through this season.

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Sarkisian himself describes gameplans as formulas. Others call it a script. How it plays out Saturday on Campbell-Williams Field at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium will be action-packed no matter what, but Georgia will look to have something to say about avoiding being the seventh team to fall to Texas’ efficacy this season.