Jeff Traylor faces his former program with brutal honesty, acknowledging the massive talent gap as the Roadrunners brace for a daunting showdown against the nation’s top-ranked Longhorns.
Jeff Traylor, the former Texas Longhorns assistant under Charlie Strong and now head coach of UTSA, knows the new No. 1-ranked team in the country is coming off one of its best wins in recent program history.
"They know they're better than us," Traylor said ahead of his Roadrunners' trip to Darrell K Royal Texas Memorial Stadium for a Saturday night affair with the Longhorns, fearing the worst. We know they're better than us."
Longhorns will argue that they won't face a team better than them for the rest of the season, and the odds will back them in that belief.
The Roadrunners, on the other hand, though 2-0, are in over their heads in dreaming about an upset.
When asked on a podcast whether he thinks UTSA could mount a competitive game, say, within the 30-point spread favoring Texas, Traylor couldn't help but laugh.
"You're still living in the naive dream world," Traylor said to podcast host Kirk Bohls. "Those days are gone, Bubba. I used to be that [optimist] guy. I'm not that guy anymore."
Texas' roster is bursting at the seams with NFL-bound talent, and they're strutting their stuff into their last home game for nearly a month. Perhaps that could warrant itself to playing below their otherworldly expectations, or, as the saying goes, "trapping" them into an unexpected result.
External noise could also be weighing the Longhorns down, in addition to the unintimidating Roadrunners being the preamble to out-of-town games at ranked SEC foes Tennessee and Oklahoma coming up.
Quarterback Arch Manning and head coach Steve Sarkisian issued apologies this week for their involvement in an AI spoof and tense sideline exchange with reporter Holly Rowe during and after the game against the Buckeyes.
Then, co-defensive coordinator Johnny Nansen was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor DWI. He will serve a one-game suspension from the team, a situation Sarkisian deemed "obviously disappointing."
UTSA has booked football matchups with Texas, in Austin, in 2028 and 2030, where the Longhorns' athletic department is forking over upwards of seven figures.
"It's not smart," a joking Traylor said about the series with the Longhorns. "We need to get out of that deal, Sark. Let us go. Free us, Sark. Free us."
In the end, Traylor has a lot to be proud of. Despite facing the top-ranked Longhorns early in the season, the Roadrunners are above .500 and have won bowl games in two of the last three years.
They aren't far removed from going 23-5 between 2021 and 2022 under Traylor and will be among the handful of teams vying for an American Conference championship in 2026.
But for now, they're focused on getting out of Austin alive.
READ MORE: Arch Manning Under the Microscope vs. UTSA
"A week ago, the narrative was we can’t win the big game," Sarkisian said about his squad this week. The opinion now is we’re the best team in the country, allegedly, and so everybody is patting us on the back. Job's not finished."
The Longhorns still want to take care of business with a statement against UTSA ... a reality Traylor knows is coming.
