Texas has gone from No. 1 in the country to making history for all the wrong reasons in the span of seven days. One week after the top-ranked Longhorns were stunned by unranked Oklahoma, Texas suffered another setback on Saturday, falling to unranked Florida.
The back-to-back losses put Texas in some incredibly rare company.
According to CBS Sports research, Texas is the first team since 1961 Michigan State to enter a game ranked No. 1 in the AP Poll and then lose its next two games against unranked opponents.
That’s not exactly the history Steve Sarkisian and the Longhorns were hoping to make.
Texas’ Recent Stretch
Texas entered last weekend looking like one of the favorites to win the national championship. Instead, the Longhorns have now watched their season take a dramatic turn in a matter of eight days.
The Oklahoma loss was stunning enough. Rivalry games can get weird, and the Sooners were always capable of giving Texas trouble regardless of the rankings.
But following it up with another loss against an unranked Florida team makes this much more difficult to dismiss as one bad afternoon.
Now the questions become much bigger.
How far will Texas tumble in the AP Poll? And, more importantly, how much damage have these two losses done to the Longhorns’ College Football Playoff hopes?
There’s still plenty of football remaining, and the 12-team playoff gives teams more room for error than ever before. But Texas has burned through a significant amount of that margin in consecutive weeks.
A week ago, the Longhorns were the No. 1 team in America.
Now they’re part of a piece of college football history that they would probably rather forget.
Texas’ Upcoming Schedule
And the schedule isn’t going to give Texas many opportunities to catch its breath. The Longhorns host Ole Miss next weekend before Mississippi State comes to Austin on Halloween. Then comes a difficult November stretch with back-to-back road games at Missouri and LSU, followed by Arkansas at home and the regular-season finale at Texas A&M. After consecutive losses, Texas has essentially turned the rest of its schedule into a playoff elimination gauntlet. There are still plenty of opportunities to rebuild the résumé, but there are also several more chances for things to unravel. If the Longhorns are going to work their way back into the College Football Playoff conversation, it sure feels like they need to win out.
