{"id":24583,"date":"2019-10-04T19:00:27","date_gmt":"2019-10-04T23:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordoncollegefootball.com\/?p=24583"},"modified":"2025-09-13T15:55:18","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T19:55:18","slug":"the-state-of-texas-football-week-six","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/2019\/10\/04\/the-state-of-texas-football-week-six\/","title":{"rendered":"The State of Texas Football: Week Six"},"content":{"rendered":"

This Saturday, the 11th ranked Texas Longhorns play the West Virginia Mountaineers in Morgantown, WV. Let\u2019s take a closer look at the state of Texas football in week six.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Against Oklahoma State<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

Prior to last week\u2019s bye week, the Longhorns beat Oklahoma State<\/strong> 36-30 at Texas. They h<\/span>eld the nation\u2019s leading rusher, <\/span>Chuba <\/strong>Hubbard<\/a>, <\/strong>to just over three yards per carry. It took 37 carries for him to achieve 128 yards. Wide receiver Tylan Wallace<\/a><\/strong><\/strong> had five catches for 82 yards.<\/span> The Longhorns held the nation\u2019s top receiver to less than 100 yards. Of 14 offensive drives, Ok<\/span>lahoma<\/span> State was held to only three touchdowns. Quarterback Spencer Sanders<\/a><\/strong> had 19 completions of 32 passes for 268 total yards with two interceptions and one rushing touchdown. <\/span><\/p>\n

Compare this to Sam Ehlinger<\/a><\/strong> who had 20 completions on 28 passes for 281 total yards with one interception. Running back <\/span>Keaontay Ingram<\/a> <\/strong>had a career high with 21 rushes for 114 yards; 54 of these yards came after his first contact. This was Ingram\u2019s second career 100-yard game. Wide receiver Devin DuVernay <\/a><\/strong><\/strong>had 12 receptions for 108 yards and one touchdown. He currently leads the nation with <\/span>39 <\/span>receptions. Duvernay is also 10 for 16 on third down conversions this season.\u00a0 On the defensive side, Texas had 12 tackles for losses. The special teams made some errors with a dropped punt return by Jake Smith<\/a><\/strong> and a careless contact by Brandon Jones<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Injury Update<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

The Texas secondary continues to struggle with injuries. <\/span>Missing the West Virginia game are <\/span>defensive back <\/span>Josh Thompson<\/a><\/strong> (<\/span>out <\/span>f<\/span>or a significant amount of time with a broken f<\/span>oot), <\/span>cornerback <\/span>Jalen Green<\/a><\/strong> (<\/span>out for at least two more weeks with a dislocated <\/span>shoulder), <\/span>safety <\/span>Caden Sterns<\/a><\/strong> (<\/span>out for at least two more weeks with a <\/span>knee<\/span> ligament sprain<\/span>), and <\/span>running back <\/span>Jordan Whittington<\/a><\/strong> (<\/span>running at practice but still out this week with <\/span>sports hernia). Questionable for this week <\/span>is<\/span> Demarvion Overshown<\/a><\/strong> (neck). <\/span> Collin Johnson<\/a> <\/strong>(hamstring) will be a game time decision and BJ Foster<\/a><\/strong> (hamstring) is expected to start Saturday. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Against West Virginia<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

Texas faces the Mountaineers this week who are in a rebuilding phase. <\/span>From last year, West Virginia has lost head coach Dana Holgorsen<\/strong>, star quarterback Will Grier<\/strong>, and star wide receiver David Sills<\/strong>. <\/span>New head Coach Neal Brown<\/strong> brings his \u201c<\/span>Nascar<\/span> spread\u201d offense which <\/span>became his signature <\/span>as offensive coordinator at Texas Tech<\/strong>. The young team currently struggles at last in the Big XII for total offensive yards and rushing yards.\u00a0West Virginia leads the series at 5-3. The Longhorns are 6-2 in true road games in the conference. Their record is 5-1 on the road against unranked opponents under Tom Herman. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Expectation<\/span> and Preview<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

Texas defense currently ranks <\/span>fifth <\/span>in the Big XII, however, they have played two of the nation\u2019s strongest offenses in LSU and Oklahoma State. The<\/span> Longhorns<\/span> are second in the FBS on third down conversions at 57%.\u00a0<\/span>They also rank third in touchdown drives of ten yards or more.<\/span> Head Coach Tom Herman <\/strong>intends to keep Smith and\u00a0Jones on the punt return this week, despite their carel<\/span>e<\/span>ss erro<\/span>r<\/span>s at the previous game. The only two schools to have three different players with four touchdown catches this year are Texas and LSU.\u00a0<\/span> Texas needs to defend the pass better and be more consi<\/span>s<\/span>tent in the run game. <\/span>Their injury-ridden secondary will have to stop WVU\u2019s receiver TJ Simmons<\/strong> to pull off a win in Morgantown. Texas is expected to win by ten this week before reloading for Oklahoma.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This Saturday, the 11th ranked Texas Longhorns play the West Virginia Mountaineers in Morgantown, WV. Let\u2019s take a closer look at the state of Texas football in week six.\u00a0 Against Oklahoma State\u00a0 Prior to last week\u2019s bye week, the Longhorns beat Oklahoma State 36-30 at Texas. They held the nation\u2019s leading rusher, Chuba Hubbard, to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3170,"featured_media":24598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,35576],"tags":[4780,4089,5422,5241,1712,2407,204,3457,579,237],"class_list":["post-24583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-big12","category-texas-longhorns","tag-big-12-football","tag-collin-johnson","tag-devin-duvernay","tag-keaontay-ingram","tag-neal-brown","tag-sam-ehlinger","tag-texas-longhorns","tag-tj-simmons","tag-tom-herman","tag-west-virginia-mountaineers"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3170"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79526,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24583\/revisions\/79526"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}