Texas Football: Ranking the difficulty of every opponent in 2018

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AUSTIN, TX – OCTOBER 21: Holton Hill #5 of the Texas Longhorns breaks up a pass intended for Marcell Ateman #3 of the Oklahoma State Cowboys in the fourth quarter at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium on October 21, 2017 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Tim Warner/Getty Images) /

Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy has a pretty thorough rebuild job in his hands for his program in 2018. Last season, Oklahoma State had both stability on the coaching staff and a star laden offense featuring a quarterback-wide receiver duo that is now with the Pittsburgh Steelers in Mason Rudolph and James Washington.

The issue for the Horns when taking on Oklahoma State this season is the travel to Boone Pickens Stadium. Road matchups against Kansas State and Oklahoma State should be the most difficult travel that Texas has to deal with this fall. Since Oklahoma State will have so many new faces on the offensive side of the ball in 2018, the Pokes fall in this ranking behind Kansas State.

Texas needs to watch out for a running back that racked up a lot of yards against its stingy front seven last year in former Freshman All-American and rising junior Justice Hill. Oklahoma State will thrive through a “bend-not-break” defensive mentality at home against mistake prone quarterbacks for the Horns and through controlling the clock with the ground game.

Herman was so close to taking down Oklahoma State last season, but Ehlinger threw away the game with a costly interception in overtime to seal the defeat. Gundy has also had Texas’ number of late with victories over the Horns in six of the last eight tries. It’ll be interesting to see who is favored between Texas and Oklahoma State this year.

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