Texas had not lost to the same team twice in one season in more than 100 years.
AUSTIN, Texas — Four quarters wasn’t enough to decide the SEC Championship as the Georgia Bulldogs took down the Texas Longhorns, 22-19, in Atlanta.
But while Georgia needed overtime to take down the Longhorns, all eyes now shift back to Austin for a potential home game in the first round of the College Football Playoff.
Georgia becomes the first team to beat Texas twice in one season since Texas A&M did it in 1909. Still, the rare feat has emotions running high for the Longhorns.
“The biggest emotion I have is anger. I’m angry. I hate losing. That’s the emotion I have,” Texas safety Michael Taaffe told KVUE. “We had a goal of going to win the SEC championship, that’s out the window. But we had a goal of going to win a national championship and that’s what we’re going to go do.”
The playoff committee said teams playing for conference titles this weekend wouldn’t be punished for losing. Texas is expected to know their playoff opponent on Sunday.
“The beauty for us is this stings, it’s hard, but we get a chance to regroup in a couple weeks and get into the College Football Playoff and go compete for a national championship,” head coach Steve Sarkisian said.
One reason the Longhorns are so confident after the setback is they know they had opportunities to put Georgia away in the first half and statistically dominated the Bulldogs. Texas stopped itself throughout the game with penalties (11 for 94 yards) that stalled scoring drives and negated turnovers they created.
“The penalties were an issue in the first half where we stalled out on some things and in some third-and-longs and whatnot,” Sarkisian said. “Our defense played a fantastic first half. I think it was like 260 yards to 54. But the score was 6-3. Clearly we weren’t capitalizing on the opportunities we had.”
The Bulldogs scored 19 second-half points behind backup quarterback Gunner Stockton after starter Carson Beck was injured on the last play of the first half and could not return. Beck did return for the final play, handing the ball to Trevor Etienne who scored the winning touchdown on a 4-yard run.
The Longhorns were disappointed in themselves after letting a game slip away that they could have won but they remain optimistic about their championship hopes.
Cornerback Jahdae Barron said the primary reason for the positive outlook is Sarkisian.
Barron said the Longhorns are in a good place mentally “just because of the level of the culture that ‘Sark’ created here. Knowing we still in it, we still have (the) opportunity to make things right.
“It can’t just be poor me’s for the next two weeks,” Barron added. “You got to get back to work. We’ll fix what we need to fix.”
Texas missed a chances to have a bye week and now will have to win an additional game to capture the title. Quarterback Quinn Ewers isn’t concerned.
“We’re built for the moments we’re going into,” Ewers said. “I have no doubt each and every guy in that room believes the same thing I’m saying right now. I said it earlier this season, it’s 10% what happens, 90% how you react to it.
“I think we do a good job of handling adversity.”