2. Texas Longhorns
Rank: 9 | Opponent: Baylor Bears | Time: 3:30 p.m. ET
Talk about bouncing back, the Texas Longhorns have looked like a completely different team in recent weeks compared to how they began the 2018 college football season. Their campaign began with Tom Herman’s team dropping one to Maryland for the second-straight year in the opener. What’s more, they followed that up by getting played closely by Tulsa, another less-than-stellar sign for what could be coming.
Instead, Sam Ehlinger and Co. have turned things around in a massive way for the Longhorns. Since that Tulsa game, they have toppled the USC Trojans, the TCU Horned Frogs, a tough Kansas State Wildcats team and then won in the Red River Showdown last week over a potent and talented Oklahoma Sooners team. Now, there is all the buzz in the world that, say it with me, Texas is back.
How many times have we heard that refrain before, though? It happens every year with this Texas program and they always seem to have a letdown game against a team that are simply better than. Thus, seeing that the Baylor Bears are now coming to down this week just seems like a bad omen for the Longhorns.
On paper, we should see the Longhorns topple Baylor. The Bears have a talented offense, but their defense can be a sieve against good teams and Texas can take advantage of that. Just from a narrative basis though, you have to put Texas on upset alert. This is the exact type of game that we’ve seen them kill optimism with in years past, and they will need to prove they’re past that before they aren’t put on watch for an upset in this type of affair.