Five Key Takeaways From Texas Longhorns' Nail-Biting Win vs. Vanderbilt

The Texas Longhorns escape Nashville with a 27-24 win against Vanderbilt to move to 7-1 on the season and 3-1 in the SEC.

Oct 26, 2024; Nashville, Tennessee, USA; Texas Longhorns wide receiver DeAndre Moore Jr. (0) stiff arms Vanderbilt Commodores safety CJ Taylor (1) as he crosses the goal line during the first half at FirstBank Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Steve Roberts-Imagn Images / Steve Roberts-Imagn Images

After their first loss in the season last week, Steve Sarkisian and the Texas Longhorns bounced back Saturday against a good Vanderbilt team by a final score of 27-24.

The Longhorns led by 14 once during the game and by 11 at halftime, but the lead slowly started to decrease with Texas's offense failing to find the endzone in the second half.

Although a win is a win, the team looked very undisciplined and kept shooting themselves in the foot. I don't want to discredit Vanderbilt one bit, but Texas missed a lot of opportunities to close the door shut on this game.

But on the bright side, Texas still had some good positives about the game.

1. Quinn Ewers bounced back, but he can be better.

Getting benched against Georgia and throwing a tipped pass that landed in an interception with his first throw Saturday against Vanderbilt made a lot of fans online and brought back the quarterback controversy. But it didn't take long for Ewers to silence them.

After the interception in the first drive, Ewers completed 17 consecutive passes and threw three touchdowns during that timespan, giving Texas a multiple-score lead late in the second quarter.

Ewers finished with 288 yards, completing 27 of his 37 passes and throwing three touchdowns.

It's a very impressive stat line, but Ewers did throw another pick later in the game, and just seemed to not look like the same Ewers pre-injury. His footwork looked awkward and he still didn't look comfortable escaping the pocket. I'm not saying he is still hurt, but if you watch the Michigan game, you will see a much more confident Quinn Ewers.

2. The offensive line did NOT improve at all from the Georgia game.

Some of these takeaways are going to be very obvious. One of the glaring issues Saturday for the Longhorns was the discipline of the offensive line.

They didn't allow seven sacks like the Georgia game, but they did still give up four as well as nine tackles for losses. What was really bad was how momentum was destroyed on multiple drives because of holding calls.

Some examples were the holding penalty on the third and one at the start of the fourth quarter that eliminated a fourth-down and ended up taking Texas out of field-goal contention to make it a two-score game. The following drive, Texas had another holding penalty on the first play of the drive which helped result in another punt.

With the experience on the O-Line, you just can't have the continued mistakes. The Vandy defensive line has been subpar all year, they had only 14 sacks before the game on the season which was second-to-last in the SEC. The offensive line will need to do more if Texas wants to compete for the top of the SEC.

3. Wisner and Blue DID improve from the Georgia game.

The running game was stellar. There's something mesmerizing about watching Tre Wisner and Jaydon Blue avoid defenders in open space.

The Texas running back room only had 1.1 yards per rush attempt against Georgia, the worst in the Sarkisian era. Against Vanderbilt, Wisner had 79 rushing yards on 17 attempts and 39 receiving yards on five receptions. Blue had 47 yards on 10 attempts while also adding 24 yards off three receptions.

There's a special emphasis on Blue improving, mostly because he showed explosiveness not just on check downs, but also off hand-offs after not getting a single rushing attempt last week.

Blue has so much speed and elusiveness to not be involved in the run game, he helped show his worth to the team today after a week of questions about what his role is.

Having the rushing game bounce back like they did was so important for the team. Texas missed the explosive plays against Georgia. Both Blue and Wisner didn't find the endzone, but they helped set up lots of scoring opportunities like the 20-yard Wisner carry on the third and seven to help set up a field goal in the third quarter. Blue also had a huge 23-yard gain on a third and nine when Texas was up 24-17 late in the fourth. That drive also ended up in a field goal.

4. Texas is so dangerous in the open field.

The Longhorns might just have the fastest offensive core in football. You can find players at all skill offensive positions that can run after the catch. Deandre Moore Jr. who was the best receiver today for Texas had a nice catch near the line of scrimmage, that he took 27 yards to the endzone, breaking a tackle on the way there. Jaydon Blue took a dump-off on a 2nd-and-16 to the first down marker after breaking a defender's ankles at the line of scrimmage. Gunnar Helm who's had amazing YAC all season made a great catch to convert a third-and-seven before taking it an additional 15 yards up the field.

Some fans can get annoyed by the continued use of quick screen passes that Sarkisian implements in his offense. But Texas's greatest strength on offense is taking advantage of open space. Once wide receiver Isaiah Bond comes back, the team will have another speedster who can make plays in the open field.

5. The offense needs to help out the defense a little bit more

Turning turnovers into points was a big point of emphasis for the team after intercepting Georgia quarterback Carson Beck three times and failing to grab points.

Once again, the Texas defense was phenomenal in creating turnovers. But once again, the Texas offense couldn't take advantage. At least this time they did at the very least score three points off turnovers which is convenient considering they won by three. That was on Pavia's second interception when linebacker Liona Lefau gave Texas ideal field position, putting them on Vanderbilt's 29-yard line.

Additionally, Ewers and the offense don't help the defense that much either when they turn the ball over multiple times on Texas's side of the field. 14 of the 24 points scored by Vanderbilt came from interceptions that gave Vanderbilt field position starting at Texas's 38 and 31. You can not blame this game for being close on the defense one bit.

Conclusion:

It might be surprising, but I think this win is going to set up Texas for success, they've been down before, but they haven't been really in a close game all year. Even with all the miscues, the Longhorns still prevailed and got the job done. This learning experience will be very valuable for the team and can show that even when Texas can't play their best football, the team can be scrappy enough to win close games.

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