By Steve Habel/Senior Editor
AUSTIN, Texas — If you’re an enthusiast of offensive football, with yards aplenty and scoring in bunches, Texas Tech’s 48-38 victory over Texas Thanksgiving night was right up your alley. If you’d rather see stout defense and a grind-it-out-yard-by-yard style, well, we certainly hope you enjoyed your turkey and stuffing and pumpkin pie and the day off from work.
By now, with his team mired in a season that still could end as its worst in 60 years, Texas coach Charlie Strong just wants to find some style — any style, in fact — that would lead to winning games again.
“It was just disappointing,” Strong said after the loss. “Our guys played hard and they competed.”
Texas Tech quarterback Patrick Mahomes, a player who [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)]was knocked out of this game with a concussion last year, got his revenge against the Longhorns Thursday in a game that began in constant drizzle. He passed for 372 yards and a touchdown and led an offensive attack that racked up 665 yards as the Red Raiders ended their regular season with a victory and a guaranteed spot in the postseason.
Tech (7-5, 4-5 in Big 12 play) got 173 yards and two touchdowns from running back DeAndre Washington as part of a rushing attack that rolled to 293 yards and five touchdowns.
Tech came into the game as the No. 2 offensive team in the nation and its 7.4 yards per play and 16.9 yards per catch showed just how explosive the Red Raiders can be.
“You can match score with score by running the football,” Strong explained. “It’s just a matter of limiting their possessions and being physical at the point of attack. We just gave up too many big plays.”
Texas was paced by running back Chris Warren III’s 276 yards and four rushing touchdowns. The Longhorns (4-7, 3-5 in Big 12 play) rushed for 403 yards but didn’t have the firepower to keep up with Tech, especially at the end of the wild game.
The loss eliminated Texas from bowl consideration and guaranteed the Longhorns their most losses since 1997.
Texas got on the board first on a 32-yard field goal by Nick Rose on the first snap of the second quarter.
Tech took just a flash, and a lot of luck, to answer via a you-had-to-see-it-to-believe-it 65-yard touchdown pass from Mahomes to Jakeem Grant. Mahomes’ pass was targeted for wide receiver Devin Lauderdale but was underthrown and landed in the hands of Texas cornerback Holton Hill. Lauderdale knocked it out of Hill’s hands, up in the air and right to Grant, who caught it in stride and sprinted down the sideline for the score.
The Red Raiders added a 51-yard field goal by Clayton Hatfield six minutes later to push their lead to 10-3.
Texas responded with its own big play as Warren — who was in the game only because of injuries to Johnathan Gray and D’Onta Foreman — took a handoff, shrugged off a tackle at the line, another 15 yards down the field and another 40 yards from the line of scrimmage to complete a 91-yard touchdown run, the longest run for a freshman running back in school history.
But any momentum the Longhorns may have gained from Warren’s record-setting run disappeared later in the second quarter when Mahomes rammed into the end zone from a yard out at the end of a 34-yard drive that began when Texas tight end Caleb Bluiett fumbled after a catch.
Tech had a 17-10 lead at halftime on strength of 329 yards of total offense and by holding the injury-depleted Longhorns to only 170 yards of total offense, of which just 32 came through the air.
The second half began as first half ended: with the Texas offense sputtering against the supposedly porous Tech defense. After the Longhorns squandered their first possession of the third quarter, the Red Raiders rolled 91 yards on 12 plays in its first drive and scored on a two-yard touchdown run by Washington, expanding the Tech lead to 24-10.
Texas answered again on Warren’s second touchdown run of the game, this one from 21 yards out, which came two plays after Tech fumbled at its own 28-yard line.
A 38-yard Hatfield field goal that was set up by a 59-yard pass from Mahomes to Lauderdale almost felt like a small victory for the Texas defense, even though it extended the Tech lead to 27-17.
The Longhorns’ somewhat-positive vibe was even stronger after Daje Johnson’s 54-yard kickoff return allowed UT to begin its next drive at the Tech 40-yard line. Texas then had real life and some momentum when Warren rolled around right end and pushed his way into the end zone for a 23-yard touchdown that pared the Red Raiders’ lead to 27-24 with more than a quarter left to play.
Alas, the Tech offense again rose to the challenge, moving 75 yards in seven plays to a 16-yard touchdown run by Washington. But the pendulum swung back to the Longhorns as Warren ripped off 51 yards on three carries before backup quarterback Tyrone Swoopes went to the “18 Wheeler” formation on four straight snaps, the final a touchdown plunge from a yard out to bring Texas to within 34-31 with 11:10 to play.
Swoopes (who rushed for 98 yards and two touchdowns on 15 carries) sprinted through a gaping hole in the Tech line on the ensuing possession and rambled untouched for a 46-yard touchdown that gave Texas a 38-34 lead with 7:54 remaining.
Anyone who thought that Tech was going away after losing the lead, simply didn’t know the Red Raiders. Mahomes engineered a six-play, 75-yard drive that was highlighted by a picturesque over-the-shoulder catch by Grant and punctuated by a one-yard touchdown run by Justin Stockton, giving Tech a 41-38 lead with 6:18 to play.
After stopping Texas on its next possession, Grant sprinted untouched 40 yards for a touchdown that built the Tech lead to 48-38 and should have been the final piece of the Red Raiders’ winning puzzle. But the Longhorns got another huge kickoff return from Johnson that led to Warren’s fourth touchdown run of the game, this time an eight-yarder.
Tech then recovered the Longhorns’ bouncing onside kick and ran out the clock on the game and UT’s chances at making a bowl game.
The Longhorns will wrap up their season — their first without a bowl since 2010 (when they finished 5-7) — Dec. 5 at Baylor. A loss to the Bears —and Texas will be a decided underdog even with Baylor down to its third-string quarterback because of injuries —would drop the Longhorns to 4-8 and be their most defeats since the 1956 team finished 1-9.
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