Georgia will be traveling to play what will most surely be the No. 1-ranked team next Saturday after Texas trounced Oklahoma in the Red River Rivalry Game in Dallas.
ESPN College GameDay will be on hand to hype up the much-anticipated matchup between the No. 5-ranked Bulldogs and Texas, which kicks off at 7:30 p.m.
The Longhorns scored a 34-3 win over the No. 18-Sooners in the neutral-site showdown in the Cotton Bowl on Saturday, improving to 6-0 overall and 2-0 in league play, having beaten Mississippi State 35-13 on Sept. 28 in Austin.
“We’re going to enjoy this one on the ride back (to Austin), have 12 hours or so, and then it’s on to the next,” said Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers, who was 20-of-29 passing for 199 yards with a touchdown and an interception in his first game back after missing the two previous games with an oblique injury.
“Where we want to be at the end of the season, we’re going to have continue to get better, that’s what championship teams do,” he said on the ABC telecast.
Ewers started slow, sacked on the first offensive snap, and then picked off on the third play leading to Oklahoma kicking a field goal for a 3-0 lead on its first possession.
But the rest of the game was all Texas, as the Sooners didn’t cross midfield again until there was less than two minutes left in the contest against the nation’s No. 1-ranked team.
“It’s like anything, when you wait that long to play, about a month off, there’s a little bit of rust,” Longhorns’ coach Steve Sarkisian said of Ewers not having played since Sept. 28 prior to Saturday’s win over Oklahoma.
“But I thought (Ewers) settled in and made some really competitive plays, especially on third downs.”
The Longhorns have won 12 in a row at Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium dating back to a 17-10 loss to TCU in 2022.
Georgia, of course, beat the Horned Frogs later that season in the CFP Championship Game by a 65-7 count.
This is a very different Georgia team, of course.
Starting right tackle Xavier Truss is the only remaining Bulldogs’ offensive starter left from the win over TCU, and Malaki Starks, Nazir Stackhouse and Smael Mondon are the three defensive starters from that CFP game still on the roster.
Texas leads the all-time series with UGA, 4-1, having won the most recent meeting at the conclusion of the 2018 season in the Sugar Bowl by a 28-21 count.