Texas Football Tries Their Hand at a New Postseason

On the Doorstep

A historic season ends in familiar heartbreak.

Somewhere right outside of college football nirvana rests the 2024 Texas Longhorns. With the promised land within their reach, the pearly gates instead slammed shut in a gut-wrenching season finale—left to rebuild in offseason purgatory, awaiting the next possible savior at quarterback.  

It’s a state of limbo most other fan bases would kill for, to be sure. Such is the plight of the sport’s biggest brand finally competing in the College Football Playoff (CFP).  

For a decade, fans could only fantasize about a burnt-orange playoff appearance—until UT’s breakthrough to the 2023 semifinal made it a reality. That season stalled on the 13-yard line, with the Longhorns gunning for the end zone as the clock expired, and ultimately falling to Washington 37-31 in the Sugar Bowl.  

In 2024, Texas returned 15 of 22 starters eager to finish the job. “I think it motivates the entire team, us being so close last year,” quarterback Quinn Ewers told reporters during the December playoff run. “A couple plays away from going to the National Championship, and then who knows what happens. But you can’t live in that dream.”  

During the regular season, Texas hit No. 1 in the polls for the first time since 2008. They were the betting favorite in every game they played following their September 2023 upset at Alabama—a 27-game streak which ended at the 2025 Cotton Bowl, in round three of the CFP, where the Longhorns again found themselves on the doorstep.

With just over two minutes remaining came a moment that will live in infamy, for those who didn’t immediately block it out: trailing Ohio State 21-14, now only a single yard from paydirt. A touchdown fans have already calculated in their heads. Instead, one earth-shattering turnover going the other way. Ballgame, 28-14, the other guys. And does it even matter that the game was far closer than the final score suggests?

“The last thing you think is the sack, and it’s going to bounce right to the guy, and he’s going to run for a touchdown,” head coach Steve Sarkisian said after the game. “First and goal on the 1, and we don’t score, you, quite frankly, probably don’t deserve to win that way.” Ewers summed it up more succinctly. “It sucks,” he told the media.

Within days of the loss, multiple preseason polls appeared online for the upcoming 2025 season, each with Texas in the No. 1 spot. To replace more than a dozen soon-to-be NFL draft picks, the Longhorns are bringing in the No. 1–rated recruiting class for 2025.

“They expanded [the playoff], and I think everyone’s assumption was, ‘Oh, you just go back,’” Sarkisian said. “Well, we’re the only one of those four teams [last year] that made it to the 12-team playoff. So it’s a credit to our staff, to our players.” The program is clearly headed in the right direction, even if that last play was not.

Redemption in Atlanta

What makes a great game?

Is it a thrilling comeback? An improbable upset? How about a legendary performance by football’s latest folk hero? Whatever it is, the 2025 Peach Bowl had it all.

Unfortunately for Texas, as one of the playoff’s most captivating quarters unfolded, they were hanging on for dear life. Great game? Or a sigh of relief?

Heralded as an instant classic, the Longhorns’ 39-31 double-overtime win was considered a foregone conclusion. They entered the second-round matchup as a two-touchdown favorite over an Arizona State team picked to finish last in Big 12 preseason polls.

Texas wasn’t taking them lightly, however. “It’s going to be a war,” Sarkisian said to the media before the game, which was held in Atlanta, at the site of UT’s December loss in the Southeastern Conference (SEC) championship against Georgia. “Adversity is going to strike in games like this, because the other teams are too good,” he added.

True to form, Texas built a 24-8 lead by the fourth quarter, when Sun Devil Cam Skattebo caught fire. The hulking running back, who finished fifth in 2024 Heisman voting, rattled off a sequence of astonishing plays: an explosive touchdown pass, a deep sideline catch, a power run to tie the game. And then, unfathomably, another, to snatch the lead, 31-24, in overtime. Texas was getting engulfed in the “Cam Skattebo game.”

What happened next showed the resolve, poise, and experience of three-year starter Quinn Ewers, at the pinnacle of his UT career. With the season suddenly hinging on fourth and 13, Ewers stepped up to deliver a 28-yard strike to Matthew Golden to tie the game. “That play is going to go down as one of the best in Texas football history,” tight end Gunnar Helm said after the game.

Before the snap, Ewers recognized the defensive front and called an audible at the line. “He saw it just in time,” center Jake Majors told reporters. “Total experienced, veteran play from Quinn just to recognize all the traits of cover zero blitz and to get us in the right protection to be able to convert on that fourth down.”

Moments later (and almost missed by everyone), the TV broadcast returned from commercial just in time to show Ewers deliver again, connecting with a streaking Helm to take back the lead for good. An interception on ASU’s ensuing series ended the torrid affair and left heads spinning. “It was like a heavyweight fight,” Sarkisian said to reporters after it ended. The Quinn Ewers game.

But he wasn’t the only one who saw it coming. “One of the things that I don’t think gets praised enough, is smart quarterbacks that get you into good plays,” Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham said to the media days before the game. “You see [Ewers] getting them into good plays consistently, and those are the dangerous guys, the guys that, when there’s nine seconds left on the clock, check you into a touchdown.”

Inside Out

The secret to UT’s success.

A long the trenches you’ll find the war daddies. The big uglies. The unsung heroes whose work is all too often overlooked.

While the particulars of their job may not always be obvious, they were never more evident than in the Longhorns’ first-round playoff win over Clemson. After two late, straight Tiger touchdowns, Texas was suddenly left clinging to a 31-24 lead, when in a flash—two plays later—Jaydon Blue got loose for the game-clinching 77-yard touchdown run.

As the speedy running back broke through the last line of the defensive secondary, alongside him in-stride was Kelvin Banks Jr., UT’s All-Everything left tackle, now 10 yards downfield, still bullying a Clemson safety.

Texas finished with a season-high 292 rushing yards, a culminating moment for Banks and the veteran offensive line. After years of getting pushed around at the point of attack, the Longhorns were at last built from the inside out.

It’s no slight to anyone to say that Banks was the team’s standout player. He became the fourth Longhorn to win the Lombardi Award and the fifth to earn the Outland Trophy, but the first to ever win them both—the two premier awards for the top lineman in college football. He now heads to the upcoming 2025 NFL draft as a potential top 10 pick.

Fellow tackle Cam Williams is also projected by ESPN to go in the first round in April. They’re joined by two more starters and likely mid-round selections in guard Hayden Conner and center Jake Majors—who leaves Texas with a school record of 57 career starts. The NFL invasion is a complete 180 for a program with only one offensive lineman drafted in the decade before coach Sarkisian’s 2021 arrival (Connor Williams in 2018).

“The depth has been important to me since I got here,” offensive line coach Kyle Flood told reporters before the Peach Bowl. “We recruited seven offensive linemen in my first year. They just kept saying yes. And they are all still with us. That’s unique in this day and age.”

“You sign a Kelvin and a Cam and a DJ [Campbell] and all those guys, that kind of avalanche … really helped changed the trajectory of our program,” Sarkisian added. “I think that group of guys shifted the thought process of how we’re going to build this team. We’re going to build the team inside out.”

The philosophy was also apparent for the defense, which ranked second nationally in points allowed, third in total defense, and whose calling card was flexing on multiple goal-line stands as the year wore on. “We definitely did that on the offensive side of the ball in that class, and I think you saw us really doing it now with the defensive line class,” Sarkisian said.

Historically a unit of strength for Texas, their defensive front only produced four NFL draft picks in that same 2010–20 period. They now send off five impact seniors from the defensive line into the upcoming 2025 draft as likely selections.

“We’re fortunate that we’re developing those guys from inside our program,” Sarkisian said.

SEC-Bound

The changing tides of college football.

Blink and you may have missed college football’s rapid evolution into professional sports.

Within four short years, amateur athletes have been granted the ability to enlist agents to negotiate endorsement deals, more freely change schools via the transfer portal, and now compete in a postseason playoff bracket that closely resembles the NFL.

“It’s one of those things that I never thought was possible when I was a student,” UT athletics director Chris Del Conte said during a 2023 town hall, speaking about an athlete’s right to control—and profit from—their own name, image, and likeness (NIL). “But here we are today. We’re all in.”

Texas has broadly embraced the sport’s progress. “This is a new era. There’s a lot of change going on,” Sarkisian told the media in December. “We all have to continually evolve … We don’t always have to do it the way we’ve always done it before.”

While player empowerment rightfully expands, the other, more impactful changes stem from so-called conference realignment, whereby colleges swap affiliation in search of ever-increasing shared payouts. These windfalls have grown so lucrative—thanks largely to the power conferences’ massive TV contracts—it’s led to common absurdities such as the University of California competing in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Texas made their own move in 2024 of course, jumping to the SEC, where they will earn millions more from the conference’s revenue sharing pool than the Big 12 could ever possibly dish out.

By doing so, they reignited historic rivalries with Arkansas and Texas A&M. For the first time in decades, Texas faced off against Florida, Kentucky, and Vanderbilt, on their way to a 7-1 record in their new conference. Finishing at 13-3, Texas matched a school-record for wins in a season.

Most unwelcoming was their newest rival, the Georgia Bulldogs, who defeated Texas first in Austin, then again in the SEC title game. The fact that UT remained as the last-standing SEC team in the final four was of little consolation, as their second straight trip to the CFP semifinal came up agonizingly short—again.

As the game continues to evolve, evidence suggests the changes were overdue. The Longhorns’ second-round playoff game was the most-watched pre–3 p.m. bowl of all time. And tickets for the regular-season finale between UT and A&M peaked at an average price of $1,072—the most expensive average price for a regular season game on record (college or NFL), according to online marketplace TickPick.

While some analysts and fans alike predicted doom and gloom when changes such as NIL, the portal, and the expanded playoff were enacted, the sport only grows more popular each year. “I think college football got this one right,” Sarkisian said after Texas’ first-round playoff victory at home against Clemson.

“As much as we critique some of the things that are happening in our game right now, this idea of a home playoff game with this 12-team format, this was pretty special, and one that we were humbled and honored to be part of here at DKR. I hope everybody enjoyed that, because we surely did.”

Champagne Problems

Days after his second straight semifinal appearance, Sarkisian reportedly turned down interviews with two NFL teams, instead opting for a seven-year extension with UT through the 2031 season.

“Champagne problems, right?” he said to reporters back in December. “One year we go to the final four, and we’re a play away from playing for a national championship. We break the school record for a number of draft picks. And how are we going to do it again?”

CREDITS: From top, Texas Athletics, Tim Heitman/Imagn Images, Texas Athletics, Dale Zainine/Imagn Images, Texas Athletics (8)