News Article
Published
Oct 18, 2026 at 11:11 AM EDT
Texas keeps building leads it can’t protect, and the latest collapse dropped the Longhorns into a club nobody wants to join.
No. 7 Texas fell 27-24 to unranked Florida at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium on Oct. 17, a week after losing to unranked Oklahoma. According to 247Sports, Texas is the first AP top-10 team since 2003 to squander a double-digit lead against an unranked opponent in consecutive weeks.
ESPN Research dug up more bad news. The Longhorns are just the third team since the AP Poll began in 1936 to reach No. 1 and then lose back-to-back games to unranked opponents.
It also snapped Texas’ 22-game home winning streak against unranked teams.
Florida arrived on a two-game slide and started Tramell Jones Jr., a backup quarterback making his first career start. The Gators had lost 45 straight games when trailing a top-25 opponent by a touchdown or more at halftime.
The Longhorns lost to them anyway.
Jones went 22 of 35 for 155 yards and two touchdowns, then tacked on 41 rushing yards on 10 carries.
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Quarterback Arch Manning was sacked five times and had only 68 passing yards at halftime. He finished 14 of 20 for 173 yards and a touchdown, but with Texas down three and 1:58 left, he lost a fumble on a sack that Florida’s Kanye Clark recovered.
That marked Manning’s third fourth-quarter turnover this season, the most in the SEC. Texas ran only 50 offensive plays, its fewest since head coach Steve Sarkisian arrived in 2021.
Sarkisian, who also calls the offensive plays, wouldn’t rule out a quarterback change.
“We’re not playing very good football right now,” Sarkisian said. “I have to evaluate everything. It’s gonna be a long night.”
“Everything means everything,” he said. “It would be easy for me to say, ‘Hey, Arch was the problem today.’ Was Arch perfect? No. But nobody was perfect on offense today.”
Pass rusher Colin Simmons, who had four tackles for loss, also left with a lower leg injury in the third quarter. The Longhorns still have No. 10 Mississippi, No. 13 Missouri, No. 19 Mississippi State, and No. 21 LSU left on their SEC schedule.