Texas learns valuable lessons and shows important qualities not yet seen in 2024 in win over Miss. St.

For the first time in 2024, the Texas Longhorns played in a close game. Well, sort of.

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Texas did end up pulling away from the Mississippi State Bulldogs on Saturday to the tune of a 35-13 win in the program’s Southeastern Conference debut. But the path the Horns took to get there was winding.

Texas only lead 14-6 at halftime. Against Colorado State, the Horns were up 31. The advantage was 21 in Ann Arbor and against UTSA. They found the middle with a 24-point lead against ULM.

This was newfound territory for the Longhorns, and their own miscues and mistakes put them in that position. Yet it was something Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian found positives in, especially after Texas pulled a way for a 22-point win.

“I’m actually kind of glad that we had some adversity today,” Sarkisian said postgame. “The first four games were kind of smooth sailing. We needed some rough waters to see how we would respond because there’s going to be rough waters ahead. I thought our guys responded really well today. They showed poise and composure. Nobody lost their cool, they stay engaged, and found a way to fight back in a tough game.”

The close margin was due to Texas’ own faults. For the game, Texas committed eight penalties for 65 yards. They only held onto the ball for 25:03. Jaydon Blue fumbled twice and was sidelined after his second surrender of the football in the second half.

But the box score indicates that Texas got it together over the course of the game. The Longhorns gained 522 yards. 324 came via the arm of Arch Manning, who was 26-for-31 with two touchdowns plus a rushing score. DeAndre Moore caught those two touchdown passes and tallied 103 yards for his first career 100-yard game.

Plus, the Texas defense allowed just the one touchdown after halftime. Mississippi State didn’t even break the 300-yard threshold despite holding onto the ball for almost 35 minutes.

Texas showed some audacity it hadn’t yet been asked to reveal in 2024, and it did so with victorious success.

That was a sentiment most if not all of the players made available to the media after the game repeated.

“He told us we needed to be in this situations like this,” Jahdae Barron said. “Other games were blowouts, so we needed some adversity so he wanted to see how we were going to adjust and how we were going to finish.”

Said Moore: “I think our team responded really well. Sark says, and it’s not just him saying it, it’s true, we can win in a lot of ways and I think we did that today.”

For some players, that type of response has been developed through years of learning how to operate within Sarkisian’s program. It has taken years, and wasn’t quite obvious when Kelvin Banks showed up in 2022.

“I love the way we responded. Everybody was still hyped up,” Banks said. “We were still ready to go, still fighting for our brothers. Like Coach Sark said, I feel like we did need that. I feel like we did need that ‘anything can happen’ type moment.”

In a different sense, wide receiver Isaiah Bond, who had five catches for 74 yards plus a 26-yard rushing touchdown, has seen it develop too. Bond, who was at Alabama last year on a SEC champion team that reached the last iteration of the four-team College Football Playoff, sees the type of resilience needed to overcome sloppy to near-dreadful performances in the Longhorn locker room.

“I think it was a good thing to have a little bid of adversity as a football team, to actually see where we’re at as a football team,” Bond said. “I think we responded well.”

Before Texas has another opportunity to prove once again where they are at not only compared to the program’s main rival in Oklahoma, but also the following week against top-10 Georgia, the Longhorns will have ample time to rest and recover over the course of a bye week.

They’ll also have time to recover and recuperate. Those are all aspects they’ll need over the course of SEC play, a journey they started Saturday with a win.

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“There’s a lot to be learned from this game,” Sarkisian said. “There’s a lot to be gained from this game. The poise and composure we exuded is something we’re going to be able to fall back on down the road because we’re going to be in some tough games.”