Texas Football: Where Horns ranked in ESPN’s first FPI Top 10 for 2020

ESPN looks to be high on the Texas football program for 2020 with their first release of the Football Power Index of the calendar year.

The Texas football program heads into the 2020 offseason with a lot of returning production but a lot of changes to the structure of the team still. There’s a ton of new faces along the coaching staff, thanks to all the turnover that head coach Tom Herman generated at the conclusion of the 2019 regular season.

If the Texas Longhorns football program is to take a big step forward this year, then it will need to happen through the maximized usage of all the young talent that this team has on both sides of the ball. That’s something that Herman wasn’t able to do for the Longhorns in 2019 when former coordinators Tim Beck and Todd Orlando were at the helm.

In fact, the Longhorns fan base was getting impatient with the results produced by Beck and/or Orlando over the course of the last three years all-around. But each side of the ball will be coordinated by two new names on the Forty Acres this year. Former Rutgers head coach Chris Ash is taking over as the next defensive coordinator.

And former Ohio State Buckeyes passing game coordinator Mike Yurcich will be taking over for Beck as the next Texas offensive coordinator.

What type of results will the change in Herman’s coaching staff produce this fall?

ESPN looks to be high on the Longhorns heading into all the spring camps across the college football landscape. According to Cole Cubalic for the initial release of ESPN’s Top 10 in the Football Power Index for 2020, Texas ranked at No. 7 in the nation.

Texas and the rival Oklahoma Sooners were the only two teams from the Big 12 present in the ESPN Top 10 for the initial release during this calendar year. Oklahoma chimed in a No. 3 on the list. The top two teams ahead of Oklahoma were the Ohio State Buckeyes and the defending National Champion runner-up Clemson Tigers.

The defending National Champion LSU Tigers weren’t anywhere to be seen in the top 10, despite having one of the more dominant seasons in recent memory. But there were a lot of losses on both sides of the ball and the coaching staff for LSU entering the offseason. Heisman winning quarterback Joe Burrow is gone, as is the reigning Broyles Award winner and LSU passing game coordinator Joe Brady.

Texas will get their shot at LSU to exact revenge for their loss at home at Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium in Week 2 of the 2020 season.

Another significant team that was ranked in the top 10 of ESPN’s FPI was the rival Texas A&M Aggies. Texas A&M ranked in one spot behind Texas, at No. 8. The Georgia Bulldogs and Notre Dame Fighting Irish rounded out the top 10 of the FPI behind Texas and Texas A&M.