3 takeaways from Texas's OT loss to UGA in SEC title game
No. 2 Texas football met the No. 5 Georgia Bulldogs in the SEC Championship Game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, GA, on Dec. 7 with a top-two seed in the 12-team College Football Playoff on the line.
Quinn Ewers and Texas football lose SEC Championship Game in OT vs. Georgia
Texas came out of the gates as the better team in this game. Quarterback Quinn Ewers led the Longhorns on multiple potential scoring drives that ended up in Georgia's territory on the plus side of the 50. But a combination of penatly calls, a missed field goal, and turnovers, led to Texas only putting up six points on the scoreboard in the first half.
Additional mistakes and penalty calls against Texas's defense also helped Georgia cut the 6-0 Texas lead in half in the second quarter.
The fact that Texas outgained Georgia by a margin of over 200 total yards in the first half was pretty much nullified by the Longhorns getting 80 penalty yards on eight flags.
Georgia took over the momentum right away in the second half. After an injury to Georgia quarterback Carson Beck at the end of the first half, backup Gunner Stockton led the Dawgs on a touchdown scoring drive to start the third quarter.
Georgia's rushing touchdown to start the second half put the Dawgs ahead of Texas for the first time in the game. Texas and Georgia exchanged blows in the second half, including a game-tying field goal by the Longhorns to send the game to overtime.
Texas came up short of scoring a touchdown on its OT possession, which gave way to Georgia scoring a game-winning overtime rushing touchdown by running back Trevor Etienne.
Georgia won the SEC Championship Game by a final score of 22-19 in the first overtime.
Here are three takeaways from No. 2 Texas's overtime loss in the SEC Championship Game to No. 5 Georgia.
Mistakes and bad calls
The aforementioned mistakes, penalty calls, and turnovers were the biggest factor as to why the Longhorns weren't able to get a comfortable lead early in the game against Georgia. If you had said that Texas was going to outgain Georgia by a margin of 206 yards in the first half alone, I would've thought the Longhorns had a two or three-score lead heading into the locker room at halftime.
Not only was Texas flagged for 80 penalty yards in the first half, but the Longhorns also missed a field goal from inside 45 yards and had a turnover on the plus side of the 50 early in the first quarter.
Most of Texas's penalty yards in the first half came from holding penalties against the Longhorns' offense. Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian clearly wasn't happy with the holding calls from the officials in the first half of the game. Sarkisian said "well, hopefully they call them for a holding some of these times too" in the first-half interview on ESPN.
In the second half, the Longhorns continued to shoot themselves in the foot time after time, especially on the offensive side of the ball. Texas missed two field goals, couldn't land on multiple Georgia fumbles, had a lot of calls go against them, and had some bad pre-snap penalties on both sides of the ball.