Texas Football: What record CBS Sports projected for Longhorns in 2020

Anything less than nine or 10 wins, depending on the COVID-19 situation, for the Texas football team this season might spell doom for head coach Tom Herman.

Expectations are likely to hold for the Texas football program this year that they need to get back to the double-digit win mark. Texas finished up last season with a record of 8-5 (5-4 Big 12) after beating the No. 11 ranked Utah Utes in the Alamo Bowl by the final score of 38-10. That was a bit of a letdown for head coach Tom Herman and his squad after the solid 2018 season.

During that successful 2018 campaign, the Texas Longhorns football program beat the rival Oklahoma Sooners in the regular season, made it to the Big 12 Championship Game, reached the double-digit win mark, and beat the Georgia Bulldogs in the Sugar Bowl. That season also saw star quarterback Sam Ehlinger have a massive breakthrough of a sophomore campaign.

Given that the Longhorns are returning the bulk of their starters, including Ehlinger, for the coming season, they should be in good position to at least replicate the results from the 2018 campaign. And there are various media outlets that are sitting in that camp.

CBS Sports recently released their win total projections for the Power Five conference teams, including the Big 12. CBS Sports essentially gave their full predictions of the 2020 regular season schedule for the Longhorns. They had Texas finishing up with a 9-3 (7-2 Big 12) regular season record, which was be good enough to potentially make the Big 12 Championship Game and reach the double-digit win mark.

Here’s more on what CBS Sports had to say for the Longhorns.

"The good news for the Longhorns is their conference road schedule is manageable: at Kansas State, at Texas Tech and at Kansas should all be wins. However, things get tricky with a Thanksgiving weekend game at Oklahoma State coming off a short week. The Horns will also likely be dogs heading into their Week 2 game at LSU, but I do like this experienced team in their big rivalry against Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl. I just think that in the Big 12’s round-robin format it’s easy to get tripped up unexpectedly, so I have TCU pulling an upset in Austin in November."

Texas was projected to finish with losses only to the Oklahoma State Cowboys, LSU Tigers, and TCU Horned Frogs during the regular season. That means that the rival Sooners would fall short against the Longhorns by these projections.

CBS gave three Big 12 teams nine wins, including Texas. The other two were the Iowa State Cyclones and Oklahoma State. But Texas was given one more win in Big 12 play than Iowa State and Oklahoma State had, thus the Longhorns would be facing the 11-1 (8-1 Big 12) Sooners in the Big 12 Championship Game.

This scenario pits Herman and the Longhorns against head coach Lincoln Riley and the Sooners for the second time in three years in the Big 12 Championship Game. Maybe this would be the time that Texas would have a clean sweep in two tries against Oklahoma in the same season.