The championship-winning icon critiques past scheduling blunders while analyzing whether this year’s gauntlet will finally prove if the hyped-up Longhorns belong among college football’s elite programs.
As Texas gears up to kick off its first game of the season this Saturday against the Texas State Bobcats, there is plenty to look forward to for Longhorns fans, and college football fans in general, as everyone waits to see what the Texas Longhorns will look like this season.
With a bunch of big names, including a quarterback who comes from football royalty, one of the top head coaches in all of college football, and an overall roster that has generated more preseason hype than any Texas team in recent memory to win a national championship, expectations are sky-high in Austin.
However, there is a double-edged sword that this team will face as the season gets underway: the strength of its schedule.
Many preseason rankings and analysts have Texas facing what could be considered the toughest schedule in the country. That means the Longhorns will have little room for error throughout the season.
Can the Longhorns handle such a grueling schedule?
Former legendary Texas head coach and national champion Mack Brown recently weighed in on the Longhorns’ challenging schedule on his new Texas Longhorns podcast, The Stampede.
Brown offered a positive perspective on Texas’ decision to schedule Ohio State in non-conference play while also highlighting the major differences between last season and this year.
“Yeah, last year’s schedule, I thought, was horrible. You go to Ohio State in your opening game with a quarterback that started two games, and you got new receivers, you got new running backs, you got questions in your offensive line… there were just so many bad things about that,” Brown said.
“Then you come back and play three or four games that you should win after that, but you lose it, and all of a sudden there’s just negative on top of negative, and you’re behind the eight ball getting started.”
Brown’s assessment of last season’s schedule is certainly understandable. Any preseason ranker or predictor who had Texas ranked No. 1 and Arch Manning as a Heisman Trophy favorite was arguably buying into the hype rather than looking at the reality of the situation.
Texas had lost a significant portion of its starting lineup on both sides of the ball to the NFL, leaving the Longhorns with plenty of questions heading into the season.
Manning had only two career starts at that point, both coming against Louisiana-Monroe and Mississippi State in the previous season. While both games gave Manning valuable experience, neither opponent compared to the reigning national champion Ohio State Buckeyes, whom Texas was scheduled to face in Week 1.
Putting a young quarterback with only two career starts into his first true test against the defending national champions was always going to be a massive challenge.
And as Brown implied, the early loss created a snowball effect for the Longhorns.
The bright side? Texas still finished the regular season with a 9-3 record.
With the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff format, a 9-3 record can still potentially keep a team in the playoff conversation. Unfortunately for Texas, the losses and lack of consistency ultimately made that path much more difficult last season.
This year, however, Brown sees the beginning of Texas’ schedule in a completely different light.
In fact, he called it “perfect.”
“This year is perfect. You got a team that you should beat if you play well at home (Texas State). Then you got Ohio State coming in the second week… and it’s going to be hot as can be,” Brown said. “That sun is going to be right in Ohio State’s face, and Texas is going to be over there getting jackets in the cold.”
Now, it may not be all sunshine and rainbows for Texas, but Brown does have a point.
The matchup between Texas and Ohio State this season presents a much more favorable situation for the Longhorns than last year’s meeting.
For starters, Texas will have experience on its side. Manning and the rest of the roster will not be walking into the matchup completely untested. The Longhorns will have already played a full game against Texas State, giving them an opportunity to get the team into a rhythm before facing the Buckeyes.
Then there is the location.
This time, Ohio State has to come to Austin.
Most importantly, the talent level is different.
Texas has brought in an enormous amount of talent across the roster, creating what appears to be a much more complete and well-rounded team than the one that took the field last season. With championship expectations surrounding the program, the Longhorns appear better equipped to handle the challenges ahead.
If everything goes according to plan and Texas opens the season 2-0 with victories over Texas State and Ohio State, the Longhorns could put themselves on an entirely different trajectory than they did last season.
Instead of allowing an early setback to create a snowball effect, Texas could use those first two games to build momentum heading into the rest of the season.
And as we all learned back in grade school when studying Newton’s laws of motion: an object in motion tends to stay in motion.
For Texas, the goal will be to make sure that motion is heading in the right direction. ... with Brown's idea of "perfect'' helping the move.
