No. 1 Texas vs. No. 5 Georgia: Five observations and Sunday chat

The Longhorns suffer their first setback of the season at the hands of the Bulldogs.

The No 1 Texas Longhorns are tasting blood in their mouth for the first time of the year following a 30-15 loss to the No. 5 Georgia Bulldogs in Austin on Saturday, a huge letdown for one of the most anticipated home games in decades.

There is no way of sugarcoating this one, but anyone thinking the season just died on the vine is firmly in their feelings. Was this a disappointing outcome? Absolutely. But there is still a lot of football to be played in this season and plenty of runway for Texas to put themselves squarely in the mix for the playoff race.

For me, this game swung into Georgia’s favor on some pretty basic aspects of the game, and hopefully I am able to adequately articulate them below in my observations.

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The Georgia defense thoroughly outplayed the Texas offense

One of the matchups I touched on earlier in the week was the battle on the headsets between Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian and Georgia head coach Kirby Smart, two coaches that have coordinated elite units on opposite sides of the ball getting to square off in a chess match.

This round goes resoundingly in favor of Smart and the Bulldogs. From early on in this matchup, the Georgia defense set the tone and the tempo for what would become a recurring theme over four quarters. The Texas offense was never truly able to get into a groove consistently over the course of the ball game — it was clear from early on in the matchup that the Georgia defense had things locked and loaded on the Texas offense. They were able to snuff out the Texas run game and keep the Longhorns offense in predictable passing downs, which allowed them to pin their ears back and tee off in the pass rush.

And they were not just teeing off aimlessly either. They were actively acting the Texas offensive line and were busting their protections. They were also very effective at making quarterback Quinn Ewers see ghosts and hold the football. Ewers was definitely rattled early on and for good reason because it felt like the Bulldog defense had all of the answers to the test before the professor handed the exam out and the Texas offense never truly recovered from it.

It didn’t matter who was back there under center for Texas, it was chaos and havoc all night. There was a small window in the third quarter where it looked like Texas was going to finally find its footing, but they were not able to sustain that success.

Fifteen points, 259 yards of total offense, 2-for-14 on third down, 1-for-5 on fourth down, 29 yards rushing, four turnovers.

Forget beating Georgia. That kind of offensive output and performance won’t be good enough to beat anyone left on the schedule. The offense is certainly better than what they showed on Saturday, but it was a very rude awakening for them. With how the first half went for Texas offensively, they were incredibly fortunate to only be down 23-0 at the break.

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The decision to insert Arch Manning was questionable

Listen, I am not a reactionary person when it comes to this stuff. It was clear early on that Georgia had things dialed in on Texas’ offense and their tendencies. It was clear that Ewers was rattled and he wasn’t seeing the field well. With that said, I was very confused when I saw my Twitter timeline with people insisting that Arch be put in the game. I was even more confused when I saw that he was warming up to go into the game considering what we had seen up until that point.

Let’s be 100-percent real here — the offense struggling during the first half didn’t just fall on Ewers’ shoulders. Everyone on that side of the ball contributed to the shit sandwich that was that first-half performance. You were not a quarterback change away from switching up fortune in that game, so I couldn’t disagree more with inserting Manning into the game when it happened.

Does his athleticism add a different dimension to account for? Sure. But things went very similarly for him once the Georgia defense adjusted accordingly. This decision screamed panic in my eyes and you were lucky that it didn’t go worse than it did because Manning ended up putting the ball on the ground and led to three points for the Bulldogs just before half as the Texas offense tried to operate a two-minute offense late.

Putting Manning into the game when they did was an absolutely impossible situation, and to be honest it wasn’t fair to him. It was a fool’s errand to expect a quarterback with limited experience to be able to overcome what was happening out there on Saturday. I know Sark said going into the locker room that he made that decision to try to allow Ewers to collect himself with how things are going, but ultimately I think it was a questionable at best decision that had very little positive impact on the outcome of the game.

There will be plenty of questions about this moving forward and ultimately that falls on the head man.

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The Texas defense played the hand it was dealt all night

If I am a Longhorn fan, I am not harboring one ounce of disdain for the defense after this performance. This group was put into impossible situations multiple times in the first half when the offense was sputtering and turning the ball over, which led to short fields for Georgia’s offense. There was a sequence in the first half over the span of about three to four drives where Georgia’s worst starting field position was their own 45-yard line. When you are constantly having to defend 50 yards or less and your offense can’t sustain drives, things are going to eventually go sideways.

Even the Longhorn Twitter account was misfiring on Saturday. That would be Andrew Mukuba who came down with that interception.

The Longhorn defense picked off Carson Beck THREE times on Saturday night and held him to a very average 23-of-41 passing for 175 yards and ZERO touchdowns. If you had told me that the Texas defense held Beck to that stat line and kept Trevor Etienne to under 100 yards on the ground I would have thought the Longhorns rolled. Instead it was a double-digit win in the other direction.

The Texas defense had one poor drive all night and that came in the third quarter when it looked like Texas was about to play its way back into the ball game. They had Georgia backed up on third and long in their own territory, but conceded the first down. From their Georgia would march down the field and complete an 11-play, 89-yard scoring drive. They made them earn it and didn’t give up the big plays, which is all you can really ask for.

Texas can win with the defensive effort that have received so far this year. That much I feel pretty good about.

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The Texas offensive line had an extremely rough night

WHOOOOOOOOOF.

The former offensive lineman in me is in agony after watching that performance on Saturday. This was another matchup I had highlighted from the jump coming into the week. This unit entered the matchup as one of the best pass-blocking units in all of college football and they exited it with what has to be the worst performance by Kyle Flood’s position group since he arrived in Austin.

Nobody was absolved from sins on Saturday. The Georgia defensive front absolutely owned the line of scrimmage from start to finish and flat-out whipped Texas’ ass. Tackles Kelvin Banks and Cameron Williams had played really well this year and both of them got got on Saturday night. I don’t have PFF stats available to me at the time I am writing this, so I won’t have all of the pressure stats, but it is pretty safe to say they will be ugly for this group. Georgia was credited with 10 tackles for loss and seven sacks on the night. That says plenty for me.

That is a statement in more ways than one and none of it is flattering for the Texas offensive line. Georgia’s defensive front is still really good, but they definitely exposed a flaw in how to attack Texas’ pass protection on Saturday and that will have to be fixed ASAP. Every team will a decent pass rush will be licking their chops when they turn this game film on.

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The quarterback play in this game was mediocre to average

Entering this matchup everyone felt like we were going to see two dueling gunslingers highlight the game. Both Beck and Ewers are considered to be in the top-five quarterback prospects heading into the draft next year, but both of them left a lot to be desired after Saturday night.

Here are the numbers for the quarterbacks from Saturday’s matchup:

Beck: 23-of-41 passing for 175 yards (4.3 yards per completion), zero touchdowns, and three interceptions. Four carries for eight yards.

Ewers: 25-of-43 passing for 211 yards (4.9 yards per completion), two touchdowns, and one interception. Six carries for -34 yards with two fumbles (both lost).

In this marquee matchup of top five opponents the quarterbacks combined for two touchdowns while contributing six turnovers. If you were hoping to see the quarterbacks light up the scoreboard on Saturday then you walked away very disappointed. Neither guy played well and consistently kept giving the ball to the other team. It was a very messy matchup amongst the quarterbacks and ultimately someone had to come out a winner.

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Not the result you were hoping for, but as I said multiple times after the game ended the mission is still the mission. This outcome doesn’t mean the season is over. The goals this team and the coaching staff set are still achievable. You watch the film, correct the mistakes, regroup and move on to the next week.

Just like coming into this week, the message should be to focus on being 1-0 each week. From there you let the chips fall how they may. The goal is to get yourself into the playoff field come January. Get there and then anything can happen.

The 24-hour rule is now in effect. After that you put this one behind you and it is on to Vanderbilt.