When Texas junior kicker Bert Auburn sealed the game-tying field goal to send the Southeastern Conference Championship into overtime, the Longhorns were given another chance to clean up four quarters’ worth of fighting against themselves.
But it wasn’t enough time to fix what had plagued them the entire game, falling to the Georgia Bulldogs in the SEC Championship game 22-19.
Texas’ failure to convert on third downs left the team without a touchdown until the fourth quarter and ultimately gave away a victory that could’ve been sealed earlier. The Longhorns finished the night with a 33.3% third-down conversion rating and were only able to convert one out of two red zone trips into a total of three points.
“I thought our guys showed a great deal of resiliency and fight today, to fight back, to force over time, but at the end of the day, we weren’t effective enough in the high red to put touchdowns on the board,” head coach Steve Sarkisian said. “I think that was probably a microcosm of the game, because we had plenty of opportunities, but we didn’t capitalize on them.”
The sting of the loss could potentially be attributed to the fact that starting junior quarterback Quinn Ewers threw for a season-high 358 passing yards and was only able to sail one completion into the endzone. Instead, Texas had to settle for six field goal attempts, missing two.
Ewers had the chance to put up a touchdown in the first quarter, moving the ball up to the Georgia 21-yard line, throwing an incompletion and being pushed back by a pass interference call, leading to Texas’ first field goal.
Those long third downs described by Ewers came from a separate thorn in Texas’ side: penalties. By the end of the first half, Texas had 260 total offensive yards against Georgia’s mere 54. Yet the score that reflected the Longhorns’ initial dominance was stuck in the single digits, as they led the Bulldogs at 6-3.
The Longhorns suffered a loss of 80 yards on eight penalties in the first half, compared to Georgia’s loss of 19 yards from two penalties, trading three potential touchdowns for field goal attempts, making two and missing one that was reattempted due to a false start. Even two back-to-back interceptions in the second quarter were called back due to offside penalties.
“We were moving the ball well throughout the entire first half,” Ewers said. “I think like Coach Sark was saying, we had plenty of opportunities, but I think we just shot ourselves in the foot a couple of times and got some third longs down there that were just hard to get out of.”
Although the second half saw some improvement, with Texas having just three penalties for 14 yards, the third-down conversions were no better. The Longhorns converted one of six third downs, getting lucky enough that their defense allowed the game to go into overtime.
Texas got to the Georgia 14-yard line, but three incomplete pass attempts ensured another field goal. The Bulldogs stunned the Longhorns by converting on a 2nd-and-8 to put Georgia at the Texas 4-yard line, running in for a touchdown on the next drive to grab the win.
