Texas Football: Ranking difficulty of every Big 12 game in 2019

4. TCU Horned Frogs

There’s four games that sit above the rest as taking to another level of difficulty for the Texas football program this season. It all starts by taking on pesky head coach Gary Patterson and the TCU Horned Frogs later this fall.

Herman and the Longhorns shook that Horned Frogs monkey off their back last season with a commanding victory at home. It could be ushering in the Ehlinger and Herman era that moved the Longhorns officially beyond TCU in the Big 12 for good, but this is still a very talented team in purple they’ll face in 2019.

If TCU figures out the quarterback situation, then the Texas defense has a lot of work to do to prepare for TCU later on in the Big 12 slate. TCU has plenty to be excited about on the defensive side of the ball after limiting head coach Jeff Brohm and ultra-productive quarterback Elijah Sindelar by dominating the Purdue Boilermakers last week.

The final non-conference test for the Horned Frogs comes in Week 4 when they host a fellow Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex rival in the SMU Mustangs. Former Longhorn quarterback Buechele will bring his rising Group of Five team to Fort Worth and try to knock off the Horned Frogs before they move into Big 12 play.