This weekend’s clash with the No. 5 Georgia Bulldogs is going to be massive for the No. 10 Texas Longhorns.
Steve Sarkisian’s team is 7-2 (4-1 SEC), and it’s been widely accepted that two losses seem to be the cutoff for College Football Playoff consideration.
The Longhorns finish this season at Georgia, against Arkansas and then against No. 3 Texas A&M at home, so there’s very little room for error the rest of the way. With that said, SEC expert and long-time ESPN talking head Paul Finebaum does believe there’s a way the Longhorns can lose this game in Athens and still find themselves in the CFP when all is said and done.
They’d have to walk a tightrope, but there is one scenario where a loss to Georgia followed by two straight wins could still get them in.
“Yes, if, of course, they beat Texas A&M at the end of the season,” Finebaum said on ESPN’s “Get Up” on Wednesday when asked whether or not Texas could make the CFP with a loss to Georgia (h/t On3). “That would be one of the best wins of the year.”
Finebaum has a point, too.
Texas wants to beat Georgia but it’s not a must
Of course, Sarkisian would rather his team go into Athens and come away with one of the most impressive wins of the season, but beating a currently 9-0 (6-0 SEC) team in Texas A&M to end the season could essentially cancel out a loss to UGA.
In that scenario, the Longhorns would boast wins over No. 11 Oklahoma, No. 14 Vanderbilt and No. 3 Texas A&M.
A road loss against an 8-1 Georgia team could almost be excused, and let’s not forget that the Longhorns gave the No. 1 team in the nation, the Ohio State Buckeyes, a tough fight in Week 1.
That has to count for something, per Finebaum.
“I know you don’t get in the playoff because you have good losses, but tell me America, who has a better loss than Texas? A seven-point game at Ohio State in the opening weekend of the year. We thought it was terrible, but in the end, it may have been a pretty decent performance, all things considered,” Finebaum explained.
Ultimately, there is one massive blunder on Texas’ resume that could still end up hurting them in this scenario, and that was their 29-21 loss to Florida in early October.
“The one glaring error for them, they lost at Florida. That is going to haunt them,” Finebaum added.
Ultimately, the Longhorns can completely erase the memory of the losses to OSU and Florida by going 3-0 over these next three weeks, but they also can’t get ahead of themselves. First, they’ve got to take care of Georgia, and that’s not going to be an easy task.
