The war hymns. The extra speakers. The 13 years of pent-up hatred for the University of Texas. It was all on full display in College Station on Saturday, but it wasn’t enough to halt the Longhorns from chasing something they’d been after all season long — a shot at the Southeastern Conference Championship.
In a gritty battle that tugged on both teams’ resilience, Texas secured a 17-7 win over Texas A&M to seal its ticket to Atlanta to fight for the conference title next weekend.
Although the Longhorns suffered three crucial hiccups in the second half — an interception, a fumble and a muffed punt — an exemplary first half performance in both the rush and passing games matched with an elite defense kept the slate clean for nearly three quarters.
“A lot of those guys have been hearing about since the day that it got announced that we were going into the SEC, that we were going to struggle in the SEC, and that it was going to be hard, and that we’re going to come into this environment tonight and it was going to be the toughest environment in college football,” Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian said. “To do it in the fashion that we did, that wasn’t a gimmick win, we didn’t hit trick plays and things. We lined up and played good, hard nosed football, and a couple balls didn’t bounce our way, but we won the game in a physical manner.”
Entering Saturday, junior quarterback Quinn Ewers’ status was unclear following an ankle injury against Kentucky last weekend. Although he was cleared from the final injury report ahead of Texas A&M, he was still reluctant to use his feet, as his first few drives were kept to screen passes that put the Longhorns at -6 passing yards in the first quarter.
Staring at its first scoring opportunity, Texas was just 15 yards shy of the end zone on a 4th-and-2, and Sarkisian brought in backup quarterback Arch Manning to go the distance. The redshirt freshman replaced Ewers and immediately sprinted for the pylon for the first touchdown of the evening.
From there, Ewers found some consistency in the passing game, throwing for a 70% completion percentage in the second quarter. During its first drive, Ewers sailed a deep ball right into the hands of junior wide receiver Matthew Golden for a 44-yard gain that set the foundation for a running back Jaydon Blue reception in the end zone for Texas’ second touchdown.
The smooth sailing came to an abrupt halt with just under six minutes left in the third quarter when Ewers suffered his first turnover. He threw his seventh interception of the season, and it came with a lengthy price. Despite the cushion of being in the red zone, a pressured Ewers in the pocket threw a pass to Aggie defensive back Will Lee III, who returned it for 93 yards and a touchdown.
And when the Longhorns found themselves in the red zone on the next drive, Ewers made an attempt to run it in. A sack stripped the ball from his hands, and the fumble was recovered by the Aggies, but didn’t result in any scoring opportunity.
Texas A&M made one final attempt to close the gap after blocking a punt that set the Aggies inside the redzone yet it was stopped short on a 4th-and-1. Both times that the Aggies made a trip to the red zone during the game, Texas shut them out while holding its opponent to under three yards per rush.
“We have a lot of faith in our defense, as we should,” senior tight end Gunnar Helm said. “We like to take it personally if we can’t capitalize, especially the two times in the red zone. But like I said before, we’ll get back to the drawing board on Monday.”
The Texas defense answered with a sack and fumble recovery with less than two minutes left in the game to quiet down an initially rowdy Kyle Field crowd with a 17-7 win.
