No. 8 Texas is officially past UTEP and is looking ahead to Sam Houston State on Saturday. But before that happens, it’s time to analyze what changed for Texas between the San Jose State and UTEP games.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much. The Texas offense still looked lethargic and slow, almost incompetent, and it led to the offense being unable to score more than three touchdowns against a mediocre CUSA team.

The defense continued to play great and create turnovers, and it still looks like the best part of the team. So what exactly changed from the Longhorns between their games against the Spartans and the Miners?

Arch Manning

It would be completely fair to leave Manning out of this, in terms of what changed. In both games, his performance was bad, but what happened was that it just went from bad to worse, so bad that fans booed the team off the field at halftime.

Through three games, Manning’s performance has been like this: bad to better, but still not good, then to really bad.

Although Manning put his usual issues on display against San Jose, he still managed to throw 19-30 for 295 yards and four touchdowns, while also recording four rushes for 23 yards and a touchdown.

In contrast, against UTEP, Manning only completed 11-of-25 for 114 yards and one touchdown. His rushing stats increased, though, as he recorded nine total rushes for 51 yards and two touchdowns.

As everybody probably knows by now, he started the game off hot, completing 4-of-5 passes for 58 yards before throwing 10 straight incompletions, and ultimately finishing the second quarter going 1-11 for 11 yards.

His play continued to be poor and inconsistent, and Texas plays Florida in The Swamp in a little over a week, so if there is anything that absolutely needs to change, it’s either the quarterback’s play or the person at quarterback.

The ground game

The ground game was one area that underwent a real change, as it was utilized significantly more against UTEP than it was against San Jose State, and to an extent, that’s the fault of Manning.

Against San Jose State, Texas recorded 32 total rushes as a team, which totaled 155 yards and a touchdown. These numbers increased against UTEP as the team recorded 56 total rushes for 226 yards and two touchdowns.

Here’s what makes the difference: although there were more rushing attempts and yards recorded, there was almost a decrease in average yards per carry by almost a yard, and the longest rush recorded was six yards shorter than the longest against SJSU.

So, even though the ground was extensively utilized and more yards were recorded, it wasn’t as effective, and it shows in the score. But the thing is, it probably wasn’t the game plan to run the ball as much as they did.

There was an increase in rush attempts recorded in the second half, specifically by Manning, after the first half consisted of Manning showcasing his inability to hit open receivers, but excelling when he’d take off and scramble.

This led to many more quarterback-designed runs in the second half, similar to what we saw from Manning last year whenever he’d enter the game, so that Sarkisian could utilize his legs.

Here’s the thing, though, that shouldn’t happen. Texas should not have to make game plan adjustments to accommodate Manning’s issues. If it’s that bad, there have to be other solutions.

Penalties

Like Manning’s section, this would be a fair statistic to leave out if we’re talking about what changed, because penalties were still prevalent throughout the game and still heavily affected Texas. So what really changed?

Although Texas may not have acquired 12 penalties for 115 yards, seven for 78 yards still hurt the Longhorns. Five less is better, though, so there’s that. Looking ahead, optimistically, maybe this trend will continue, and penalties will continue to decrease.

There’s not much more to say about this, as this has been an issue throughout all three games for Texas now. So, here’s a third straight week of saying this: This team has to be more disciplined. There’s nothing more to it.