Texas Football: Where Horns ranked in ESPN’s last early 2020 top 25?
How did the Texas football program place in ESPN’s latest version of the early top 25 rankings for the 2020 college football season?
While most of the “way-too-early” top 25 rankings lists for the 2020 college football season were already released earlier in the offseason, there are going to be some that are edited and updated closer to the start of spring camps across the country. Texas football is finding itself improving in a lot of those updated rankings, though, as they hauled in a pretty fruitful 2020 signing class on National Signing Day (Feb. 5).
One of those national college football media outlets that didn’t up the Texas Longhorns football program on their latest release of early top 25 rankings for the 2020 season is ESPN. On Feb. 19, ESPN’s college football senior writer Mark Schlabach released his updated version of the early top 25 rankings ahead of spring ball around the nation.
He kept a similar top five to ESPN’s original way-too-early top 25 rankings after the National Championship win for the LSU Tigers over the Clemson Tigers last month. These rankings had the top five in this order from top-to-bottom: Clemson, Ohio State Buckeyes, Alabama Crimson Tide, Georgia Bulldogs, Penn State Nittany Lions.
Penn State was the late riser in Schlabach’s latest rankings for the 2020 college football season. And the top 10 of his rankings were rounded out in this order: Oregon Ducks, Florida Gators, LSU, Oklahoma Sooners, Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
Texas found itself all the way down to the No. 23 team in the country in these rankings. They were sandwiched between two schools from North Carolina. Former Texas head coach Mack Brown and the North Carolina Tar Heels were at No. 22 and the Appalachian State Mountaineers out of the Sun Belt were No. 24.
The Big 12’s Baylor Bears and recently hired head coach Dave Aranda rounded out the top 25.
Moreover, here’s what this piece from Schlabach had to say on the placement of the Longhorns at No. 23 and their outlook for 2020.
"Is Year 4 now or never for Longhorns coach Tom Herman? Texas has fallen short of preseason expectations the past two seasons, and Herman made wholesale changes to his coaching staff after an 8-5 campaign in 2019. Herman hired seven new assistants, including offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich (from Ohio State) and defensive coordinator Chris Ash (former Rutgers head coach). Herman also plucked Oklahoma’s Jay Boulware to be his associate head coach for special teams/tight ends. Ash, a former defensive coordinator at Wisconsin, Arkansas and Ohio State, will try to improve a defense that surrendered 431.5 yards per game last season, the third most in school history. Yurcich got the better end of the deal with quarterback Sam Ehlinger (33 career starts) returning. The Longhorns will have to identify new go-to receivers after Duvernay and Johnson exhausted their eligibility."
ESPN mentioned the key losses for Texas as wide receivers Devin Duvernay and Collin Johnson, center Zach Shackelford, guard Parker Braun, defensive end Malcolm Roach, and safety Brandon Jones. That’s not all that bad in the way of losses considering the Longhorns didn’t have a single 2020 NFL Draft early entrant.
Next. How former Longhorns transfers fared elsewhere in 2019. dark
The other teams worth mentioning in this top 25 were the Texas A&M Aggies (No. 11), Oklahoma State Cowboys (No. 12), Iowa State Cyclones (No. 18), and USC Trojans (No. 21). The teams that Texas will face in 2020 that were ranked in the top 25 here are LSU, Oklahoma State, Oklahoma, Iowa State, and Baylor. This surely won’t be an easy road for the Longhorns this fall.