Texas Won 31-3 and Still Hasn't Solved Its Ground Game: 55 Rushing Yards Against One of the Weaker Run Defenses in the Country
The defense scored, the quarterback threw three touchdowns, and the scoreboard says rout. The rushing line says something else — and it is the problem Texas takes on the road to Missouri.
For all of Saturday's comfort, No. 11 Texas still hasn't solved the ground game. A week after its most explosive rushing performance of the season, Texas put up a dud against one of the weaker run defenses in the country in the 31-3 win over Mississippi State, Burnt Orange Nation reported in its postgame analysis read by this desk.
When the Longhorns pulled their offensive starters, they had just 55 yards on the ground and only three rushes longer than five yards — one of them a run by Arch Manning himself. Hollywood Smothers, coming back from injury before leaving with injury, finished with minus-6 yards; Raleek Brown averaged 3.8 yards per carry; and Michael Terry's four rushes for 16 yards came when the outcome was already determined. Mississippi State was disruptive in the backfield all night, with eight tackles for loss totaling 39 yards, and holding Texas to 60 rushing yards in all was the second-best run-defense performance of the Bulldogs' season. Longhorns Wire's grades told the same story: the run game averaged under 2 yards per carry, Manning was sacked five times, and the offense graded B-minus against the defense's A.
What covered for it is the reason Texas (6-2) is still in the playoff race. The defense generated pressure without the sidelined Colin Simmons — nine tackles for loss and seven sacks, led by Rasheem Biles, whose forced fumble produced Maraad Watson's scoop-and-score — and held Mississippi State to 187 total yards. Texas hits the road to face Missouri next, carrying a defense playing at a top-five level and a ground game that, a month into the SEC schedule, remains the unsolved problem.
