When Davon Booth reeled in a shovel pass from Blake Shapen and weaved through a beleaguered Texas defense for a 62-yard touchdown, which gave Mississippi State a 38-21 lead with 12:29 to go in the fourth quarter of Saturday’s game in Starkville, I thought about 2010.
Mack Brown’s program carried the weight of a BCS title game loss to Alabama into a season that began with sky-high expectations. Will Muschamp’s defense did what it could to keep the Longhorns afloat, but Greg Davis' listless offense turned the football over enough that the dam eventually broke.
Fifteen years later, the fate of Steve Sarkisian’s club was all but sealed.
The 2010 squad went from a 13-1 juggernaut in 2009 to a 5-7 dumpster fire. Even with a win over Oklahoma sandwiched between road losses to Ohio State and Florida, and last Saturday's 16-13 overtime road win over Kentucky, it felt like the 2025 group was headed in the same direction.
The offense consistently shooting itself in the foot allowed the defense, which was gashed time and again by the Bulldogs, to be overexposed.
Nevertheless, Deonte Anderson’s personal foul penalty for roughing Arch Manning on a failed fourth-and-1 on the ensuing possession after Booth’s touchdown changed everything.
With the drive still alive, Manning connected with Emmett Mosley V for a 21-yard touchdown with 9:34 left in regulation, kickstarting a run of 31 unanswered points. Manning went 12-for-20 for 169 yards and two touchdowns in the fourth quarter, persevering through another game in which he was under constant pressure and got little to no relief from a virtually non-existent running game (72 net yards on 32 carries, including the five times Manning was sacked, which lost a total of 29 yards).
Less than two minutes after Mason Shipley made it a 10-point game with a 26-yard field goal, Ryan Niblett took advantage of Ethan Pulliam's booming 57-yard punt. Pulliam outkicked his coverage down the middle of the field, paving the way for Niblett's game-tying 79-yard touchdown.
The defense, as it did in last Saturday’s overtime victory over the Wildcats in Lexington, allowed only one first down after the Shapen-to-Booth touchdown, ending a miraculous 45-38 triumph on Ethan Burke’s fourth-and-20 walk-off sack in overtime. The stop came on the heels of Matthew Caldwell making the most of his lone pass attempt, relieving an injured Manning and lofting a 10-yard touchdown to Mosley on second-and-8 in overtime.
Texas (6-2, 3-1 SEC) defied logic by rallying from 17 points down in the fourth quarter to win. The Longhorns were dead in the water. The on-field meltdown coming on the same day that off-field news surrounding Sarkisian’s future on the Forty Acres dominated the pregame chatter ahead of the team’s fourth consecutive game away from Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium created a perfect storm for a program to be in complete and utter turmoil at the final gun.
Instead, Sarkisian and the staff will get ready for Texas to welcome a good Vanderbilt team to town next Saturday with all of the team’s season-long goals on the table.
The Longhorns will head home from Starkville with blemishes that could prevent them from reaching their preferred destination. Chief among them is the health of Manning, who had to be helped off the field after taking a shot at the end of a 13-yard run on the first play of overtime, abruptly ending a day in which he threw for 346 yards and accounted for four touchdowns (three passing and one rushing).
Nevertheless, Texas is done with a month’s worth of football games played away from home with only one SEC loss on the ledger. Unlike the 2010 Longhorns, Sarkisian’s club is bowl eligible and had enough about it to escape two road games with a pair of too-close-for-comfort victories.
That’s the bottom line. Texas won back-to-back overtime road games it had little to no business winning.
It remains to be seen what becomes of a season that started with talk of a return to the College Football Playoff and a possible national championship run. For now, Longhorn fans should take comfort in the fact that this team, as flawed as it is, had enough about it to pull out two wins that could’ve easily gone the other way.
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