Where Texas football ranked amid updated ESPN SP+ for 2021
Although they aren’t returning a whole lot of production from last year’s team, Texas football still held a spot in the top 20 of the most recent updated version of ESPN’s SP+ rankings for the 2021 season. Earlier in the week, ESPN’s Bill Connelly had his latest version of the SP+ rankings released for the 2021 college football season.
The SP+ rankings are derived off three major categories: returning production, recent recruiting, and recent performance. Overall, the Longhorns ranked pretty high up in the trio of these categories on the offensive side of the ball, but weren’t as good on defense.
Clearly the Longhorns are doing fine on the recruiting trail, and finished up the 2020 season on a high note. But returning production is the part of these projections where Texas lagged behind in the end.
More detail on Texas football and the Big 12 in SP+
Texas ranked at No. 20 overall in the latest edition of the SP+ rankings for the 2021 college football preseason. But they ranked at No. 18 on offense, and all the way back at No. 34 on the defensive side of the ball.
In the Big 12 alone, the Longhorns ranked at No. 3 behind the rival Oklahoma Sooners and the Iowa State Cyclones. Oklahoma owned the top spot amid the Big 12 teams in this projection, at No. 3, and Iowa State rang in not too far behind them at No. 7.
There were only two other schools out of the Big 12 that made it into the top 35 of the SP+ projections. Head coach Mike Gundy and the Oklahoma State Cowboys found themselves at No. 29 and head coach Gary Patterson and the TCU Horned Frogs at No. 33.
Moreover, the Longhorns finished up with a record of 7-3 (5-3 Big 12), winning five of their last six games, under the direction of now former fourth-year head coach Tom Herman. Back on Jan. 2, the Longhorns replaced Herman with the former Alabama Crimson Tide offensive coordinator and the reigning Broyles Award winner Steve Sarkisian.
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Texas had a tumultuous, but revitalizing, offseason thus far after all of the coaching staff turnover and better results on the recruiting trail. There is more hope sparked on the Forty Acres this offseason after the hire of Sark last month.