Texas Football: Explosive Win a Reminder of How Good This Team Could Be

Texas fans got a glimpse of what the Longhorns looked like at their best

Texas ran up nearly 50 points and 600 yards of total offense. 

Sam Ehlinger looked like the Heisman contender we all expected him to be at the beginning of the year. Devin Duvernay was the best receiver on the field. Younger guys like Malcolm Epps, Jake Smith and Brennan Eagles were making plays all over the place as well. 

The defense, after a slow start, came up with a pair of fourth-down stops in the red zone to stop Texas Tech drives. 

Matthew McConaughey danced with players on the sideline. 

Everything about Texas' 49-24 win over Texas Tech looked like the team Longhorn fans expected to see all season. For just one day, long-enduring seniors like Malcom Roach and Zach Shackleford were kings of DKR Stadium. 

Yet as much fun as everyone seemed to have on a damp day on the Forty Acres, there were some upsetting implications for Longhorn fans if they sit down and think about it.

This team, this dominant explosive dangerous team, it was in there the whole time. 

These were the same guys who lost by 10 points to a 5-7 TCU. It's the same players who were physically dominated in a 24-10 defeat to Baylor.

Friday's win was just as much a testament to the talent on the Texas roster as it was an indictment of how that talent was handled through the season.  

"This is not where we hoped we would be to begin the season," head coach Tom Herman said. "But to send these seniors out that was the mission from the time we met on Sunday was nothing that has happened prior to this week, matters. What matters is the seniors (and) sending them out in a game (the would remember)."

That's fair enough. On a cathartic, feel-good day it's fair to give the program an opportunity to celebrate a senior class that was small in numbers but heavy in leadership and helped lay the foundation for what Herman is hoping will be the future success of his program. They were a group who suffered through a freshman year of uncertainty, a coaching change and bought into a coach and staff that they didn't choose themselves. 

Herman's standard 24-hour rule to enjoy victories can be extended a bit with a layoff before the Longhorns' eventual bowl game, but the hard work of getting this kind of performance from his team on a weekly basis starts on the other end of that celebration.

"There will be certainly time enough to evaluate (the program)," Herman said. "(To) evaluate the whole program from the top down from myself to the support staff to everybody involved."