The Label “Underachiever” Doesn’t Quite Fit The Texas Longhorns, But No excuses Remain for 2013

By Trey Scott

Kansas State’s Tre Walker thinks the Longhorns, with an 11-15 record in their three most recent Big 12 seasons, are pushovers.

“They kind of laid down a little bit,” Walker said this week at Big 12 Media Days. “That’s nothing to say about their character. That’s just what they do.”

Walker isn’t alone in thinking the Longhorns are soft. That’s the lazy, de facto label for a team that underachieves. Texas has an easy route toward disappointment. The national media, for the most part, is too bullish on the Longhorns. It’s not realistic to expect them to scrape their standard year after year.

Think about it this way: Collectively, Texas is minus-66 since the AP’s preseason Top 25 poll in 2002 (subtracting the final ranking of the year from the preseason slot). Special circumstances are made for the 2010 and 2011 seasons. [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)] In the former, Texas started out at No. 5, had a disastrous 5-7 season and ended up neither ranked nor among those receiving votes, of which there were 23. So we can conservatively say the Longhorns weren’t in the top 48 that year, giving them a minus-five. In 2011, Texas started out at No. 26 and finished unranked but got the fifth-most votes among unranked teams, putting them at No. 30 for a final tally of minus-4.

Only thrice since 2002 have the Longhorns finished better than expected — 2004 (plus-2), 2005 (plus-1)and 2008 (plus-7). In 2009 they began the year as No. 2 and finished in the same spot.

The biggest blow to the overall plus-minus comes from the 2010 campaign, when the Longhorns were ranked No. 5 with a quarterback, Garrett Gilbert, who was 15-of-40 with two touchdowns and four interceptions in his last public appearance, was much too high. That’s not excusing seven losses, but a slip-up should have been predictable.

Look no further than Walker’s Wildcats for an example in how easy it is to cheat perception and overachieve. K-State rounded out the 2011 season in the No. 15 spot after starting unranked. In the following preseason poll (2012), the Wildcats were left out, only to go on a 10-0 run and finish No. 22. As an overall component, the Wildcats didn’t actually change much between the seasons: the key players, Collin Klein, Arthur Brown, John Hubert, were present throughout. And yet they “overachieved” last season, despite being incrementally better than they were the campaign before.

Now the Longhorns venture into 2013, a season that carries a different feel than the ones in the post-McCoy era. No excuses remain. The team is no longer too young, no longer unfamiliar with foreign offensive and defensive schemes, no longer captained by a quarterback who’s not ready for all this. Nineteen starters return. Manny Diaz has been running the defense for three seasons, the same amount of time Major Applewhite has been a co-offensive coordinator. David Ash has started 18 games.

Official rankings won’t be released for a few more days, but the summer magazine prognosticators have the Longhorns inside the top 15. This isn’t too high. An extreme pessimist would have a hard time looking at Texas’ 2013 schedule and picking out a sure-fire loss. Vegas doesn’t project the Longhorns to lose a single regular season game and has the contest against Oklahoma a draw.

My call? Since the spring I’ve leaned toward a 10-2 regular season record, with losses at TCU and Baylor. In a conference rife with turnover at the quarterback position (David Ash is the only incumbent starter to be locked in at first string), two losses would still have the Longhorns in the hunt for an automatic BCS bid, by virtue of a Big 12 title.

Less than that, and Tre Walker won’t be the only one wondering aloud about the Longhorns’ makeup.

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