Entering the 2020 offseason, the Texas football program has their stock trending up once again since they beat Utah by a 28-point margin in the Alamo Bowl.
The outlook for the Texas football program heading into the postseason was bleak after a bevy of coaching staff changes and a seven-win 2019 regular season. Head Texas football coach Tom Herman was left without either of the two coordinators or two wide receivers coaches that he started out the 2019 campaign with in the Alamo Bowl against the No. 11 ranked Utah Utes.
However, the Texas Longhorns football program tended to do well in the postseason under Herman’s direction. Last season, the Longhorns rounded it all out with a win in the Sugar Bowl over the No. 5 ranked Georgia Bulldogs by the final score of 28-21. Then sophomore quarterback Sam Ehlinger rushed for three touchdowns and declared that Texas was back after that Sugar Bowl win.
To wrap up Herman’s first season as head coach on the Forty Acres, he beat the Mizzou Tigers in the Texas Bowl by the final score of 33-16. With the Longhorns 38-10 win over head coach Kyle Whittingham and his Utes in the Alamo Bowl on New Year’s Eve, Herman is now 3-0 in the postseason at Texas.
Herman has also won those three bowl games by a combined 52-point margin. This is a new type of dominance that the Longhorn football fans haven’t seen in the postseason out of their head coach since the better end of Mack Brown’s tenure on the Forty Acres.
But the bigger point to all the success that Herman saw in the postseason with the Longhorns is where the program is trending heading into the 2020 offseason. Or at least where the Longhorns are trending now compared to where they were at heading into the regular season finale at home on Black Friday against the Texas Tech Red Raiders.
Texas now heads into the offseason with a record of 8-5 (5-4 Big 12). Considering all the other teams that went 5-4 in the Big 12 lost their bowl games, Texas looks like the third best team in the conference by season’s end. Even though the Oklahoma Sooners were thoroughly embarrassed in their College Football Playoff Semifinals game in the Peach Bowl against the LSU Tigers, they still at least took home their fifth straight Big 12 Championship.
And the Baylor Bears solidified their status as the second best Big 12 team when they beat the Longhorns by two touchdowns at home back in November. Baylor is taking on Georgia in the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day.
The fact that Texas could be walking out of the 2019 season owning the status of the third best team in the Big 12 is pretty hard to fathom given where they were at in the middle of conference play. This Texas team was defeated by the Iowa State Cyclones and the TCU Horned Frogs during the regular season. And they came oh so close to losing to the Oklahoma State Cowboys, Kansas State Wildcats, and the lowly Kansas Jayhawks.
Heading into the offseason with two straight wins and potentially a solidified top 10 ranked 2020 recruiting class actually puts this program in a pretty good position. About two months ago, there were questions as to if Herman would be on the hot seat entering the offseason.
Texas did get wins over Utah, Oklahoma State, and Kansas State this season. They were also about the closest that any team came to knocking off star quarterback Joe Burrow and LSU up to this point of the season. The No. 3 ranked Clemson Tigers will get their shot at beating No. 1 LSU in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game.
Although this season fell short of expectations for the Longhorns, there is plenty of hope heading into 2020. Texas will return more talent next season than they did in 2019, including a to-be senior starting quarterback Ehlinger. They also bring back both of the most productive running backs from the 2019 team, and nearly their entire set of starters on defense from the Alamo Bowl.
Longhorns fans shouldn’t let the hype get out of control yet, but Herman has this program in a much better position entering the offseason than they were at about a month or two ago. Herman has also filled both coordinator spots with solid candidates that should be considered upgrades.
Former Ohio State passing game coordinator Mike Yurcich will be the next Texas offensive coordinator. And former Rutgers Scarlet Knights head coach Chris Ash will be the next defensive coordinator.