Texas walked into Neyland Stadium for the first road test of its 2026 season and walked out still perfect, but the bigger story from the 20-17 win over Tennessee came after the final whistle.
Steve Sarkisian made it clear he took issue with the way his team had been described before kickoff. After the Longhorns improved to 4-0, the Texas coach pushed back hard against the idea that his team lacked toughness.
"I think they had eight guys get carted off, so I'm not sure who wrote the article today and what coach said, 'we weren't a physical football.'" Sarkisian said after the 20-17 win. "They might want to write another article."
The comment was a direct response to an article from The Athletic that included a quote calling the Longhorns "soft" and saying they did not have an edge. Texas answered that talk with a bruising performance on the field.
The No. 1 team in the country had opened the season with three home wins, including what was described as the best win in college football, but conference play and a first-ever trip to Tennessee brought a different kind of test. The Longhorns passed it.
Texas’ defense set the tone. Freshman quarterback Faizon Brandon was knocked out of the game at one point with an apparent upper-body injury before later returning, and the pressure never really let up from there. The Longhorns finished with 10 sacks and 12 tackles for loss.
Tennessee, which came in with one of the top rushing offenses in the country, was held to just 70 yards and was controlled at the line of scrimmage. Even if the Texas offense didn’t put together its sharpest outing of the season, the overall message was loud and clear: this team can bring plenty of force when the game demands it.
Now Texas heads into its bye week unbeaten, and the win in Knoxville left no doubt about how Sarkisian wanted his team viewed afterward.
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For Texas, the appeal is obvious: Simmons is giving the program a rare kind of Heisman candidate, one whose value is measured in pressure, disruption and the way he changes games on that side of the ball. The catch is that the award still tilts heavily toward offense, and current odds leave him behind several more traditional contenders. Even so, his rise has made him impossible to ignore, and whether he can keep forcing his way into the debate will come down to how voters view a defensive season in a race built for quarterbacks and skill players. [Read more 🡒]