Mistakes, penalties, missed opportunities ultimately doom Texas in Sugar Bowl loss
NEW ORLEANS – It was all but a given that winning the Allstate Sugar Bowl and earning a spot in the College Football Playoff championship game would come down to which team would make the least mistakes – and that was the case in second-ranked Washington’s 37-31 win over No. 3 Texas in the 90th rendition of this classic game, played before a sellout crowd of 68,791.
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The Longhorns, playing in their first College Football Playoff game ever, made mistake after mistake, committing uncharacteristic penalties and putting the football on the ground with two fumbles – one by CJ Baxter in the third quarter and another by Jaydon Blue to thwart a drive near the red zone in the fourth – and general miscommunication in several key stints of the loss.
Texas needed to play a clean game, like it did against Texas Tech on Black Friday and again versus Oklahoma in the Big 12 Championship, to have a chance to beat Washington. It didn’t deliver.
“Unfortunately we dug ourselves a hole with some self-inflicted wounds,” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said afterward. “And give credit to Washington, they played a very good game. [They] made some big plays down the field. And when they extended the lead, we got a little bit out of game plan to try to fight our way back into it.”
Texas had 10 penalties for 66 yards, including getting flagged on their first play from scrimmage and the opening kickoff of the second half.
“Those were some things that were a little disappointing,” Sarkisian said. “And I don’t know if that’s because of the lay-off or just sometimes being in the environment and you’re a little excited to go play.”
The two fumbles were killer, with Baxter’s in the third contributing to total domination in the quarter for Washington. The Huskies ran 22 plays in the to just five for Texas, racked up a 157-34 edge in total yards and turned a tied game into a 13-point lead on the second snap of the fourth quarter.
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“The defense did a nice job getting off the field, whether it be with takeaways or you know, getting stops,” Washington coach Kalen DeBoer said about the third quarter. “We started feeling that there in the second quarter, and in the beginning of the third, getting a chance to have the ball to come out. Marching right down the field and then go to get in that 13-point lead – that was a big time of the game for us to be able to be a little bit more control.”
Texas defensive front was supposed to be a difference maker, but the Longhorns had no sacks and zero quarterback hurries. Washington and stellar quarterback Michael Penix Jr. had an answer for every question, enough so that the Huskies were able to hold on as Texas charged hard to win at the end.
“We just couldn’t get (Penix) on the ground. We couldn’t generate enough pressure,” Sarkisian explained. “Our guys were fighting with the pass rush. We couldn’t put enough pressure on the tackles, quite frankly, to get a holding call to even get them off schedule. The times we did get him into some third-and-longs, we had the ability to get off the field. But we just couldn’t get him on the ground.”
The Longhorns never led in this game – a first for Texas this season.
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“We ran the ball really well early in the game but when you fall behind, it kind of stressed us where we had to kind of not lean on the run like we wanted to,” Sarkisian said. “And that really changed as much of the game as anything. We had to really start throwing it.”
