Worry Meter: Where should Longhorn fans feel panic before the final two games?

I read Keith Richards’ autobiography a few years ago and found I was able to relate to the famous British rock star on one key point. Richards once went nine whole days without sleep and, even more impressively, only slept two nights a week during the Rolling Stones’ heyday. The avoidance of sleep and increase in waking hours meant the guitarist has actually lived three lifetimes of consciousness. I’ve also had many sleepless nights that mere mortals haven’t experienced, tossing and turning, but instead of spending my waking hours writing Tumbling Dice or cutting up in bathroom blues bars doing all sorts of drugs, I’ve spent three lifetimes worrying about the Longhorns. As all obsessive Texas fans probably have.

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Now, Texas is 9-1, with two regular-season games left, possibly a conference championship game, and hopefully a deep playoff run. I’m confident in the defense, I believe in the coaching, and I trust the quarterback room to win when the game is on the line. But I do have some concerns nonetheless. Here’s my worry meter for the stretch run.

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Not Worried At All:
The online discourse around the Longhorns quarterback affects the team. No chance. Texas Twitter hasn’t been a fun place to be this week with Arch Manning and Quinn Ewers bands forming as fast as an angry Black Friday mob at K-Mart. What matters is that head coach Steve Sarkisian hasn’t given it any attention. He’s rolling with Ewers, and that’s that. As I wrote after the Georgia game, indecision is what makes a controversy. Sark has been decisive. I’d argue he has a higher approval rating right now than any coach has had in Austin since Darrell Royal. That’s right, even over Mack Brown post-national championship. So if those same fans all fully trust the captain of the ship, why are we wasting time arguing over who the First Mate is? I get it—we’re fans, it’s what we do. Especially in Austin when a backup quarterback is involved.

But can I remind you, this is a locker room that has seen a lot and has been through a lot. Sark mentioned before the season he has 20 or 30 leaders of this team. Wins in Fayetteville and Nashville bear that out. The team has gone through battles with Ewers and to his credit, Ewers has shown that while he might stub his toe on the way to his destination, but he seems to always show up just in time.

Slightly Worried:
The Texas hasn’t played anyone narrative. These things tend to work themselves out. First, Texas controls its own destiny. If they win out in the regular season, this will be a moot point. Not even A&M could diminish themselves so poorly this weekend against Auburn that Texas wouldn’t be given credit for a road win over the Aggies in College Station. What’s more, the royal “we” often gets obsessed with this kind of talk when there’s nothing else to point the finger at. But the reality is that some team, a contender, will lose down the stretch, weaken their own playoff résumé, and begin to receive the ire of the talking heads, the masses, and the committee.

I personally don’t worry about whether Texas has played anyone or not, because once they start looking at it, the committee will see that Texas has beaten the teams who beat the teams we’re being compared against. Most importantly, Sark and his team have instilled a standard. That standard is Texas’ opponent. It sounds cliché, but it isn’t. When Texas has met that standard, they look dominant, regardless of who their opponent is.

Worried:
The offense never gets in rhythm. I want to believe that the win in Fayetteville sparks the best football of the season, much like the similar win in Ames against Iowa State did in 2023. But facing the Kentucky Wildcats defense and reigniting a blood feud with Mike Elko’s Aggies in College Station might not be the best proving ground for such a hypothesis. I don’t agree with the talking heads that Texas lacks difference-makers outside at wide receiver: Matthew Golden, Isaiah Bond, and Ryan Wingo are special athletes. DeAndre Moore Jr., once healthy, is a very dependable player. Gunnar Helm is the most consistent tight end on the 40 Acres since David Thomas. But if there’s no threat of a deep ball due to Ewers’ current limitations, it might not matter. More games will continue to look like the win over Arkansas—the defense will need to establish dominance while the offense merely hangs on. Which leads me to my next worry.

Sweating:
Texas can’t run the ball. The CJ Baxter injury on the first day of fall camp was enormous. I don’t think I realized how impactful not having a bell cow running back would be, especially with the struggles that Ewers has faced of late and Jaydon Blue’s ball security issues. This will be Sark’s first season without a 1,000-yard rusher, but worst of all, Texas is without someone to tote the rock and carve through a defense when it’s nut-cutting time. Maybe the committee approach will continue to work, but it’s going to be a white-knuckle ride finding that out.

I’m Having a Panicked Nervous Breakdown and Sobbing in the Self-Checkout at HEB:
Special teams cost Texas a win in College Station, if not more. Am I a little worried that the sports gods pay Texas back for stabbing their Aggie brethren in the back in June when the Longhorns stole Jim Schlossnagle from College Station? Somewhat. But Texas has been putting on displays of Bad Bull to the Aggies for a long time, and comeuppance hasn’t come for the bogeyman yet. My biggest worry is the third phase of the game.

While the defense has been special and the offense has been good, the Longhorns’ special teams units have been downright awful—minus kicker Bert Auburn, who is having a slightly above-average year. Silas Bolden has made several great plays for Texas this year, but it’s not coming together on punt return. His good returns seem to be negated by penalties, and he has fielded too many balls he should have let roll into the end zone. The kickoff return game should have received a huge boost with Golden’s addition from Houston, but it has been held back by holding calls.

Worst of all, Texas is averaging just under 32 yards per net punt, failing to even crack the top 122 in the country or be listed on ESPN’s punting stats page. The biggest offseason regret seems to be the fact Texas didn’t snag a veteran punter in the portal like they did last year with Ryan Sanborn. When the Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Vanderbilt games briefly looked shaky, it stemmed from offensive sputtering that was furthered by the punt team’s failure to flip the field. Against Georgia, the Bulldogs essentially lived on Texas’ side of the 50 thanks to turnovers and weak punting. It hurts to lose a game off special teams play—it feels like losing in Spades because of too many sandbags.

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This Texas defense is special and deserves better. But very simply, if Texas continues to have periods of identity crisis on offense, they’ll have poor field position and will need to send out the punt team. At this point, we know what the result of that play will be and I’m just hoping the defense holds on.