Can the Texas Longhorns operate at peak efficiency against Ohio State?

After the College Football Playoff quarterfinals thinned the pool of potential national champions down to four, oddsmakers and the rest of the college football world seemed to have been given a clear answer to what team is the current best in the nation. While one side of the bracket saw two scrappy defense and run-oriented programs advance to the semi-final, the other side features two teams that couldn’t be farther away relative to expectations heading into the semifinal.

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On one side of the coin, the Ohio State Buckeyes have looked unbeatable in their past two games, with a high-powered offense and a stingy secondary steamrolling through Tennessee and Oregon, cementing themselves as the comfortable betting favorite to win the national championship.

On the flipside, Texas has gotten to where it needs to be, but it hasn’t been pretty. A near two-touchdown favorite, Texas was forced into overtime by the underdog Arizona State Sun Devils in a game that could’ve easily gone the way of Kenny Dillingham‘s team.

Ohio State is seemingly playing at its ceiling, with quarterback Will Howard seamlessly operating the offense and getting the ball into the hands of elite playmakers like true freshman Jeremiah Smith, who had 187 receiving yards and two touchdowns against the Ducks. The defense has matched that level of play, nearly shutting Oregon out in the first half of the competition, the second week in a row where the opponent team scored its first touchdown in the last 20 seconds of the half.

It’s becoming more and more popular to say that OSU’s future opponent, the Texas Longhorns, has played far worse in these playoffs than what was expected of the SEC runners-up. Criticism, whether fair or embellished by the media, for Quinn Ewers has been high all season, but questions about the offensive line and defense have emerged after the close call in Atlanta.

There’s a world in which this Friday’s Cotton Bowl matchup will feature two teams that simply need to return to the mean, and that two schools of seemingly similar rosters and staffs talent-wise will play a close and even game. However, with Ohio State sitting as a five-point favorite for a game played in Texas, it seems like many don’t think that Texas has what it takes to play up to OSU.

But what if Texas plays up to its ceiling, just like the Buckeyes did against the Ducks?

When you first analyze that question, it’s important to realize what Texas’ ceiling actually is. It’s not fair to say that Texas’ offensive ceiling is a 50-point game, especially not against an opponent the caliber of Ohio State, but there are data points that show this Longhorns offense can sustain a strong offense for a full 60 minutes.

EPA is an overarching offensive stat that shows how efficient an offense is at moving the ball to the end zone. EPA stands for expected points added, so an offense that has a 1.00 EPA/play is averaging a touchdown every six plays. That, of course, is an impossible line to sustain in a game of this magnitude, but the Longhorns have cases of its offense showing up during this season.

Without counting games against weaker opponents, whether it be FCS or low-tier SEC home games, Texas has two offensive games that stand out. At .19 and .20 EPA/play, Texas’ two most efficient offensive games came at very different points in the year. Against Michigan, the Longhorns scored 31 offensive points on 77 plays, the 79th percentile of offensive efficiency. Against Arizona State, despite what many fans would expect, Texas’ offense had its biggest game of the year, scoring 32 offensive points in 71 plays (80th percentile).

Though these aren’t sexy numbers, it is probably the best you can expect from this Texas offense 15 games into the season. One observation that can be made from these games is that Texas’ two best games in EPA/dropback (efficiency on throwing downs) are the ones mentioned above, and two of Ewers’ three best PFF-graded games were against Michigan and ASU. For Texas to hit its ceiling, Ewers needs to hit that 84th percentile EPA/dropback that he hit against Michigan, when four different receivers made a large impact on the game, notably TE Gunnar Helm and WR Isaiah Bond.

Defensively, Texas is arguably the best in the nation. The sky is the limit, and you don’t need fancy advanced stats to be told that. In rivalry games against Oklahoma and Texas A&M, the Longhorns held their opponents to single-digit percentile efficiency. The big story of the playoff has been the unprecedented regression of the Longhorn D. After not letting a notable opponent eclipse 40% efficiency the entire season, Texas allowed both Clemson and ASU to hit 60th percentile efficiency, one of the reasons the Longhorns had to fight deep into both games.

While the offense had one of its best games of the year against ASU, the defense was worn out by Cam Skattebo and a Sun Devil offense that ran over 100 plays. That shouldn’t happen against OSU, but notable players like Anthony Hill Jr., Michael Taaffe, and Malik Muhammad must step up to get closer to the level of play against their past rivals.

The last addition that could change the Longhorn’s fate against OSU is the run game. Texas has had just one notable game all season where the run game was extremely efficient, hitting the 76th percentile against Oklahoma. If Texas can replicate the success on the ground it had in that game, combined with the passing of Ewers as he did against Michigan, Texas could burst through the ceiling already outlined. These are all big ifs, as the Clemson game was the only time in which Texas was above 50% efficiency in both dropbacks and rushes.

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The long answer to the question of what is Texas’ ceiling has been laid out, but in simple terms, the ceiling of this team is an 80th percentile offense and a nearly 100th percentile defense. That type of makeup can win a championship, or first beat Ohio State, and a renaissance in the run game could bring that offensive ceiling even higher. But for Texas to replicate any of what was done against teams like Michigan and Oklahoma, the Longhorn defense needs to step up and make the offenses life as easy as possible. Ewers, Quintrevion Wisner and Pete Kwiatkowski have a lot of work ahead of them as Friday draws near, but the 60-minute ceiling of Texas is one that can beat the red-hot Buckeyes.