Bang or whimper? Saturday marks start to November slate, which hasn't treated Texas kindly of late

November marks the beginning of the stretch run of the college football season. It’s where teams either prove themselves as being a step above conference mates, or bow out of title contention after losses and shift efforts toward making a better postseason bowl. In the Big 12, it’s the month that typically contains the final four regular season games on a team’s schedule, as it does this year.

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For this group of fourth or fifth-year Texas players, November has mostly served as a time where the No. 24 Longhorns find their place in the chaff pile as opposed to the wheat. In the current group of super-seniors’ freshman year in 2018, Texas finished 3-1 and found its way into the Big 12 title game. In 2019, 2020, and 2021? Texas was 2-2, 2-1 due to the cancelation of the Kansas game, and 1-3.

If the players who have been wearing the burnt orange for those 15 November games want to change the story on how their careers have fared in crunch time, it will require a spotless month. Never in the history of the new Big 12 title game has a team reached AT&T Stadium with more than two conference losses like the Longhorns currently have.

Step one for Texas comes Saturday at No. 13 Kansas State. Their performance in these upcoming four games will either make the games closer to Thanksgiving far more meaningful in terms of title contention in Steve Sarkisian’s second year as head coach of the Longhorns, or be the determining factor between the Cheez-It Bowl or the Texas Bowl.

On Monday, Sarkisian keenly downplayed a day over a month away in favor of focus on the upcoming trip to Manhattan, Kan.

“I think the challenge is not to focus on December 3, it’s to focus on this week and not get caught looking down the road and give this week all the attention it deserves,” Sarkisian said. “That’s what the best teams do.”

He added he believed the team is doing that well, and responded to the bye week with a good day on the practice fields upon their return. It’ll take the Longhorns’ best effort to top KSU, whose two losses are to No. 19 Tulane and the undefeated No. 7 TCU Horned Frogs.

And providing their best effort for a full 60 minutes has been tough to come by for the Longhorns against Power 5 teams this year. Against an admittedly stout schedule — the full slate ranking No. 17 according to ESPN — the Longhorns are 3-3 in games against Power 5 teams.

The three agonizing losses? All one-possession games where Texas surrendered a second-half lead. Even the win over Iowa State included Texas trailing late, but to their great credit, Sarkisian’s team took back the advantage against the tricky Cyclone defense.

The other two wins versus West Virginia and Oklahoma saw Texas build a lead throughout the game. Those were the most complete performances of the year. That makes up one-third of the games against Power 5 competition.

Sarkisian believes those two games versus the Mountaineers and Sooners are truer embodiments of the 2022 Longhorns than in those other four games.

“The common theme is us getting a little outside of ourselves when adversity strikes late in the ballgame, when the fourth quarter rolls around,” Sarkisian said. “I felt pretty good going into the locker room in Stillwater last week and coming out of the locker room. For whatever reason, things didn’t go our way and we didn’t quite play to the level I know we’re capable of playing.”

But that’s a hard bridge for many to cross, especially when it pertains to Sarkisian’s tenure at Texas. The potential is there and is present for longer than brief flashes, but the actual has been more of what we saw last year.

And not to put prior UT football transgressions on Sarkisian, but even past head coaches seemed to have an affinity for agonizingly close games in month 11. Only in 2018 did it really seem to work Texas’ way. That’s a significant volume of heart-pounding Saturdays.

A super-majority of Texas fans would live with those thrilling games if they resulted in thrilling victories. Therein lies the problem, that’s what has eluded Texas, Sarkisian, and even the players who donned burnt orange in the few years before his arrival.

So how do the elder players make sure it happens in their final November?

“Breaking things down and not getting too ahead of ourselves, just really focusing on the now and what we can control as each day comes,” Roschon Johnson said Monday.

With the 5-3 record, a game ahead of last year’s pace, Sarkisian truly believes progress has been made: “We’ve got a mature group that wants to do it the right way. I think we’ve come a long way in a year’s time,” he said Monday.

But in order for the program of which these players have been a part of for four, or even five, years, there’s no better place to provide Sarkisian his argument’s best supporting evidence to date than this Saturday.

A win would prove a lot, and keep conference title chances alive.

The alternative? November will come and go without truly meaningful Texas games as the holiday season approaches for yet another year.