No. 5 Texas Longhorns · 2026

Three Tells — Watch September

1. The Muschamp defense vs. Ohio State, Sept 12. A rebuilt back seven meets the No. 1 team in Week 2 — survive it and the schedule opens up.
2. Real yards from the new backfield. Brown and Smothers inherit a 39th-percentile run game where nearly all the value was Manning's legs — the roster's one unfixed flaw.
3. Manning's consistency. 2025 was elite off-script, streaky on schedule (81st- vs. 26th-percentile splits) — the Heisman path is the success rate catching up to the big plays.

Unit Outlooks at a Glance

Chips are copied verbatim from the report's Unit Outlook Board and use its fixed four-tier scale — Strength · Lean strength · Open question · Rebuilt — defined in the Data Dictionary.

The gauntlet: the No. 2 schedule in FBS by average opponent SP+ (points better than average, schedule-adjusted) (only Arkansas's rates harder, with an FCS breather Texas doesn't get); four coin flips — at Tennessee, Oklahoma in Dallas, at LSU, at Texas A&M (Missouri barely outside) — and one clear-underdog game, Ohio State. Split the flips and 10–2 makes the playoff.

The record math: the market prices Texas a touchdown better than its SP+ line — and 2025's 10–3 came with a +14 turnover margin, historically ≈ one win of flattery on the record.

Availability: LT Trevor Goosby (knee) returned to practice Sept 1 and is trending toward the opener; otherwise clean (checked Sept 2).

Go Deeper