After a 13-year wait in the series, the Longhorns made the changing conferences look easy with a dominant, physical victory and locked up a College Football Playoff berth.
The Texas A&M Aggies have waited 13 years to get revenge on their archrival, the Texas Longhorns.
The Aggies have been on fire since Justin Tucker’s kick in 2011, when the winners of the last meeting of the in-state rivals created what they call the “eternal scoreboard.” They chirped. They turned their noses up and in the other direction. They rebuilt their home field into a lavish showcase and loudly boasted about the bold new era they had ushered in without burnt orange in the SEC.
But most of all, they were looking forward to the day when the Longhorns would finally return. They prepared just as well, making sure there were no luxuries to hold them back (or a huge buy to find a coach capable of coaching).
On Saturday night, returning to Kyle Field to play No. 3 Texas again in front of a record 109,028 feverish fans, No. 20 Texas A&M had two chances, but each of those 13 years was waiting to be delivered. . From fourth downs, a pair of nine-inch passes and some out-of-the-box momentum to providing much-needed catharsis on the fans, give or take.
Every time, though, the Longhorns offered a simple response to their 17–7 victory over their more experienced SEC foe: No.
No, hell no. You don’t have to pass.
“Since the day we announced we were going to the SEC, a lot of guys have been hearing that we’re going to have a hard time getting into the SEC. The fight. We’re going to come into this environment tonight—it’s going to be a tough environment in college football—and we’re not ready for it,” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said. “There’s a lot of things that are going to challenge us, including a lot of people in that locker room, coaches and players.
“That wasn’t a gimmick win. We didn’t play trick plays, we lined up and played good, tough football and we executed. We didn’t bounce the ball a couple of times, but we won the game in the physical way that we know we need to do in the Southeastern Conference.
They won, and now the Longhorns are not their opponents with a 13-year start, they’ll play in their first SEC championship game next week—a berth in the College Football Playoff locked up in the process. . The perception that changing leagues is hard is misguided. There's a lot more involved than updating a bunch of logos on uniforms and throughout football facilities.
However, in Texas, they're making things look easy, if not easier.
Against the Aggies on Saturday, the Horns were a very physical team. They prepared well and dominated nearly every series, saving a blocked punt and two turnovers in the red zone that brought life to a game that had been a runaway. They nearly doubled Texas A&M’s total yardage (458 to 248) and the two Bills were evenly matched on the ground and through the air. Defensively, they were shut down despite Will Lee III returning a tipped pass for a touchdown in the third quarter for a 93-yard home run.
While the final score failed to accurately reflect how one-sided things were in the Lone Star Showdown rematch, it got the job done.
“I would label it as a passerby, but we run the ball in tough times, especially late in games, and I thought that showed tonight,” Sarkisian said. “We continue to play really good defense. I thought we did a good job of limiting the quarterback from scrambling, we kept the ball in front of us. I thought we handled it well tonight. All in all, it was really us.”
Sarkisian is meticulously planning for this Texas team to show up in moments like these. The former Nick Saban assistant coach is fully aware of the physicality required to transition from the Big 12 to the SEC, and he has assembled one of the best front sevens in the country. They recorded just three sacks, but were in the backfield after the snap on nearly every play and harassed freshman quarterback Marcell Reed for just 146 yards on 16-of-23 pass attempts.
The normally elusive, dual-threat QB was bottled up for 60 yards on the ground and a 10-yard touchdown pass to A&M The power, measured by the rushing attack (3.0 yards per carry), basically moved the chains on the night. , which turned into a battle of wills. The visitors won by an overwhelming majority.
Not that the Aggies didn’t try. They tried to set the tone on the game’s first drive after Texas had them on fourth-and-short after two possessions outside the 10-yard line. Instead of scoring points, coach Mike Elko got the crowd behind him by running up the middle.
Stuff.
A&M tried again with the clock ticking from behind the goal line for another fourth-and-short in the fourth quarter. The touchdown would make this a one-score game, with excited fans sure to rock the stadium’s third-largest crowd the rest of the way.
Tailback Amari Daniels never had a chance, getting devoured by Texas lineman Ethan Burke, just as Vernon Broughton and Jermaine Lall had before.
"We're excited," linebacker Anthony Hill Jr. said. "We don't think anyone's going to get in the end zone on us. If you think you're going to get stuck on us, I think you're out of your mind." "That mentality doesn't come from fourth downs on your opponent, but from training camp drills like Sarkisian's "red zone lockout" over the years, and especially from this year's training camp drills. The premise is simple: With the ball at the 25, it's just a turnover between the first team offense and defense.
One side has to score, the other side has to stop.
Against the Aggies, that situation came with a berth in the SEC Championship Game on the line.
"Sark harps on culture," cornerback Jahde Baron said. "We're going to continue to build a culture not only on the field but off the field."
Sarkisian has challenged his offense to match the intensity of recent weeks, with a series of up-and-down performances since the loss to the Georgia Bulldogs, not really showing the level of play he knows they are capable of. That was especially true in the run game, which dealt with season-ending injuries to the team's top two options but seemed to explode against the Aggies with 240 yards, including 33 carries for a career-high 186 yards from Quintrevian Wisner.
"We're all excited, we couldn't be more proud of how our team handled adversity and how prepared and composed we were throughout the game," said quarterback Quinn Evers, who had a touchdown and an interception while playing with a limited ankle injury. He has been out of practice for a week. “It means a lot to us. It’s a long-standing tradition. It’s back and it’s fun to be at the top.”
But the program isn’t really where it wants to be. Despite being the biggest brand in a state most associated with football, it hasn’t achieved national success in college football, as other Bluebloods have historically done in Austin. There have been brief periods of dominance, like Darrell Royal in the 1960s and ’70s and Mack Brown in the early 2000s. But that’s fleeting on 40 acres, which has been very chaotic over the past century.
A move to the SEC could help change that. The promise of more meaningful games like Saturday’s (and some big checks, of course) should help the Longhorns improve on and off the field, so they can win in a place where resources are never enough, but sometimes the will to win is overwhelming. The program should be better, because this is a bigger league than the Big 12 they left behind. It’s because they’re moving No.. the winning forces want to compete as if they have the power.
Now, thanks to the SEC mentality that Sarkisian has fostered since his arrival, the Longhorns have arrived at that door. The challenge hasn’t just been accepted, it’s just a game away—with the glory that comes with it.
UT System Chairman Kevin Eltief, who envisioned this moment years ago and helped engineer the school’s entry into the SEC in July 2021, said with a laugh. “In the first year, getting to the SEC championship is pretty sweet.”
It’s a lot sweeter than making the Aggies wait another year to taste what the Longhorns got on Saturday night.