Texas Football: Longhorns make history in a terrible way

Although most Texas football fans thought there wasn’t a whole lot of hope for a win for new head coach Steve Sarkisian and his squad on the night of Nov. 6 in Ames against the Iowa State Cyclones, the way this happened was embarrassing yet again. While Texas did technically cough up a lead in this game, it didn’t happen the way it usually does this fall.

The lead in this game for Sark and the Longhorns was only 7-3 after making the switch from redshirt junior quarterback Casey Thompson to sophomore Hudson Card. That one touchdown that the Longhorns scored in the first half was all that this team would amass all game.

Pulling Thompson for Card brought a brief spark for the Longhorns, but the problems are bigger than that at this point for Sark and the Longhorns. Card and Thompson, in fact, are two of the smaller problems for Texas to figure out right now.

Texas would come up with a lame performance in the second half of this game on both sides of the ball to the tune of a loss by the final score of 30-7. The edge that Iowa State had in the second half would be a win by a margin of 23-0.

QB switch doesn’t stop Steve Sarkisian and Texas football from a tragic loss to Iowa State

The performance for the Longhorns in the second half was definitely the worst of the season so far. It wasn’t any one position group on the offense that was the problem here. Card looked anxious in the pocket and got happy feet again, the offensive line was terrible, the receiving corps was phased, and the ground game was ineffective.

Turning the attention to the defensive side of the ball, the effort was gone, the secondary was outmatched, and injuries started to pile up in the second half. Whether you want to talk about missed tackles, blown coverage, domination in the trenches, or missed reads by the linebackers, there’s so much to harp on from this loss.

But we’ll focus on that more in the week ahead before Texas can reset against the Kansas Jayhawks. First, we have to take note of the history that the Longhorns are making in the worst way possible right now. Sark is getting off to a start with this program that is worse than the likes of former head coaches Mack Brown, Charlie Strong, and Tom Herman.

Patience must still win the day here, but this process is not fun.

Texas is getting embarrassed and breaking the wrong kind of records. The Longhorns now have the first four-game losing streak in Big 12 play since 2010. And Texas just had a four-game losing streak extended this far by an unranked team for the first time in program history.

To make matters worse, Iowa State just beat Texas three times in a row for the first time in the series between these two teams.

This is also the second time that Texas lost to Iowa State by more than 20 points since 2015. Prior to 2015, Texas only had one loss to Iowa State, which came in 2010 by a seven-point margin.

Following this 23-point loss to Iowa State this weekend, Texas owns a record of 4-5 (2-4 Big 12), with the bowl hopes on life support at this point. Next up for Texas is a meeting with Kansas on Nov. 13 at home.