3 reasons why Texas football will dominate UTEP in Week 1

2) Why Texas football will dominate UTEP

Texas is more than a 40 point favorite over UTEP this weekend. With the Longhorns being favored by a whopping 43 points, and having a 99.8 percent chance to win this per (according to the ESPN Football Power Index), there’s not much to look for out of UTEP for most of this game. UTEP did show out better than anticipated in the second half in their Week 1 win over the FCS Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks, but that’s about all the momentum they have going into this game.

At least the Longhorns mostly new look coaching staff had some new game film to work off of for UTEP in the past week of practice and film study. UTEP did take care of business against SFA by the final score of 24-14 at home in El Paso last weekend, but they also exposed some flaws for themselves on both sides of the ball.

This is really something that recently hired defensive coordinator and former Rutgers head coach Chris Ash and offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich can take advantage of. Ash was a tremendous get for a defensive coordinator hire, and should bring some much needed aggressiveness to the table at multiple levels of that side of the ball this fall.

Meanwhile, Yurcich can help take a lot of the play-calling duties off of the shoulders of Herman. Yurcich has developed his play-calling since his time under head coach Mike Gundy on staff with the Oklahoma State Cowboys as their offensive coordinator. That continued under Ohio State Buckeyes head coach Ryan Day, when Yurcich served as their passing game coordinator last season.

The coordinator combination of Ash and Yurcich has to be chomping at the bit to get this season started for their respective sides of the ball.