When head coach Steve Sarkisian was asked Monday about how major upsets of Notre Dame and Texas A&M this weekend might impact his preparation for Saturday’s matchup against UTSA, he said that Texas football has never underestimated the Roadrunners.

While it might be easy for the Longhorns to overlook a mid-major Conference USA squad with a 1–1 record that is projected to lose by 12 points at DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium, UTSA is a gritty, hard-nosed football program.

Last season, UTSA clinched the Conference USA title in steamrolling fashion. The Roadrunners went undefeated before dropping their final game to North Texas, rounding out the regular season 11–1 and topping Western Kentucky 49-41 in the conference title game. During its historic season, UTSA appeared in the AP Poll for the first time in program history at No. 24 after defeating Rice on Oct. 16 and climbed to No. 15 by Nov. 20 with a win against UAB.

This year, the Roadrunners have gone into overtime during both of their games, losing a heartbreaker to No. 24 Houston at home in triple overtime and narrowly escaping Army on the road last week.

“You turn on the tape at UTSA (and) they get your attention quickly with their schemes and the way they play the game,” Sarkisian said. “Clearly, they had a lot of success last season and then they’ve had two really hard-fought games here to start the year. We need to be ready to go.”

However, it’s hard to be ready to go when you don’t know who’s going to start as quarterback.

In last Saturday’s near upset of then No. 1 Alabama at home, Texas saw its quarterback room nearly fall apart at the seams. With 30 seconds left in the first quarter, redshirt freshman quarterback Quinn Ewers exited the game after being brought down on his left shoulder by Alabama linebacker Dallas Turner.

Ewers was immediately escorted to the medical tent and then the locker room for an X-ray, sending sophomore quarterback Hudson Card onto the field to finish the drive.

While Card stayed in the remainder of the game, he also picked up an ankle injury. In between plays, Card limped to the line of scrimmage and lined up behind sophomore center Jake Majors for the next snap.

Sarkisian listed both Ewers and Card with “day-to-day” injuries and noted that freshman quarterback Maalik Murphy was not healthy, potentially leaving redshirt freshman Charles Wright as the healthiest quarterback available for Saturday. 

Regardless, the Longhorns’ offensive line will need to dominate the trenches for a third week in a row. Junior running back Bijan Robinson was also listed by Sarkisian as having a day-to-day injury, making it crucial that the line can make holes for senior Roschon Johnson and junior Keilan Robinson and protect the pocket to avoid any other blows to the quarterback depth. 

Fortunately for Texas, freshmen like left tackle Kelvin Banks and right guard Cole Hutson have stepped up on the line. Standing at 6-foot-4 and 6-foot-5 respectively, the duo earned pass blocking grades of 76.8 and 77.2, allowing three sacks to an Alabama defense that averaged 3.9 a game last season. 

“I just look at how big (Texas) is and how fast (Texas) is,” UTSA head coach Jeff Traylor said on Monday. “(Offensive line coach Kyle) Flood and (defensive line coach) Bo (Davis) have really done a fantastic job at improving the girth and the size upfront.”

Traylor told his locker room that UTSA’s schedule feels SEC-caliber, playing “games of attrition” against Houston, Army and Texas where performance in the trenches often determines the result.

“It’s a big man’s game, and (Texas) has really improved on both lines,” Traylor said. 

Since Texas entered the AP Poll for the first time this week at No. 21, Sarkisian expects another raucous, SEC-esque home environment for Saturday, but is weary of “eating the rat poison,” or letting the outside noise make games bigger than they actually are. 

“We could go ‘Everyone told us how bad we were’ (to) now this week ‘Everyone wants to tell us how good we are,’” Sarkisian said. “We got to be careful to quiet the noise outside of our building and focus on us being enamored with us and focused on our preparation.”