Texas Longhorns End Season With Alamo Bowl Loss to Washington Huskies

First things first – the Texas Longhorns’ 27-20 loss to the Washington Huskies in the Alamo Bowl has no bearing on the future of the program.

It doesn’t hurt recruiting, momentum or starting to warm up head coach Steve Sarkisian.

Now that that’s out of the way, what does it mean?

It means the Longhorns still have a long way to go before they’re ready to contend.

But we already knew that.

Without Bijan Robinson, DeMarvion Overshown and Roschon Johnson on the court, the holes in the Longhorns’ armor were all too apparent.

Robinson’s explosive game in particular was sorely missed, and the Texas offense struggled to adjust until it was too late.

And despite that, Texas still had plenty of opportunities to win the game.

Unfortunately for Sark and company, however, the Horns just couldn’t get out of their way.

Whether it was Xavier Worthy’s dropped passes, failure to convert costly third-and-short situations, or defensive breakdowns, if it wasn’t one thing going wrong, it was something else.

But even with those mistakes, one more bounce here and there in their favor and who knows how different the outcome could have been?

Only those rebounds didn’t go their way, and they’ll now head into the offseason with everything in front of them.

Yes, they lose their two best players in Overshown and Robinson.

And yes, there is still a lot to figure out in terms of progressing in year three as a football program.

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But there was one very important positive on Thursday night as well — the play of Quinn Ewers, who bounced back from a tough final stretch of the season to complete 31 of 47 passes for a Longhorns bowl game record for the freshman first with 369 yards and a touchdown.

And while it wasn’t enough to get the Longhorns over the finish line, it was exactly the type of performance Ewers needed to build the confidence of the Longhorns staff and fan base.

Outside of that, though, there’s still a top-three recruiting class that will bring depth, positive culture and talent to the roster.

And one of those recruits, No. 1 QB Arch Manning, will push Ewers to continue to improve.

Not to mention, Ewers and Worthy will have all spring and summer to fine tune their timing in the deep passing game.

Either way, an improvement from 5-7 to 8-5 is a nice jump for the second year under Sarkisian.

And the third year should – if things go according to plan – yield even better results.

Because at the end of the day, despite a loss in a meaningless game, Texas is headed in the right direction.

They just aren’t ‘back’ yet.

You can follow Matt Galatzan on Twitter @MattGalatzan

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