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    Jeff Howe
    Through four innings of Saturday’s 9-7 loss to UTSA in the Austin Regional, Texas looked the part of the No. 2 overall national seed.
    A two-out, two-run single through the right side of the Roadrunner infield by Jonah Williams and Casey Borba’s RBI double to left field highlighted a five-run, four-hit third inning for the SEC regular-season champions. Leading 6-1 with reliable lefty Luke Harrison toeing the rubber, the Longhorns seemed well on their way to a winner’s bracket victory when they took the field for the top of the fifth.
    Unfortunately, Texas (43-13) suffered a catastrophic blowout, derailing what had been a relatively smooth ride. Jim Schlossnagle’s club suddenly looked like the one that had lost seven of its previous 11 games before going down at the hands of UTSA (46-13) for the second time in as many meetings.
    A fielding error charged to Adrian Rodriguez (one of two on the night for the Longhorns, who couldn’t overcome a tidal wave of defensive mishaps) and Harrison issuing free passes loaded the bases to open the frame. Jalin Flores didn’t quite catch up to a ground ball up the middle off the bat of second baseman Nathan Hodge.
    Hodge scored with one out after his two-run single kickstarted a four-run inning for the Roadrunners, pulling off a double steal while occupying third base with one out. Right fielder James Taussig made it a one-run game by ripping a double to right-center.
    "It was just a back-and-forth game from that point on," Schlossnagle said.
    Texas failed to get a run back in the home half, which ended on a Max Belyeu strikeout with the bases loaded. Max Grubbs opened the fifth by recording two outs on two pitches, but Flores misread Hodge’s blooper, one of three consecutive singles for the Roadrunners, who grabbed a 7-6 advantage.
    UTSA didn't trail the rest of the way. The defensive issues, combined with the Longhorns stranding 13 runners on a woeful 3-for-18 night at the plate with runners in scoring position, and ace right-hander Braylon Owens ending each of his four relief innings for the Roadrunners with one of the seven strikeouts he fired put Texas in a situation where it has to win twice on Sunday to force a winner-take-all regional championship on Monday.
    "We lit the fire and they stoked it and ran with it," Schlossnagle said of coach Pat Hallmark's team, which has notched the first two NCAA Tournament wins in program history with two wins in as many days at UFCU Disch-Falk Field. "The message to the team is we can't be thinking about playing anything other than just one pitch at a time. I know it sounds coachy, but that's the fact. If we start thinking about the overall scheme of things, it won't ever happen that way.
    What the Longhorns will attempt isn’t unprecedented.
    As a regional host in 2005, Texas dropped a winner’s bracket game to Arkansas before beating Miami (Ohio) and dispatching the Razorbacks twice en route to the school’s sixth national championship. The Longhorns made a similar trek to Omaha in 2011, eliminating Texas State and notching two wins over Kent State to survive the regional.
    Nevertheless, Schlossnagle’s club must overcome Rodriguez, Williams and Ethan Mendoza continuing to battle injuries and a depleted pitching staff (Ruger Riojas will get the ball in the elimination game, but all bets are off thereafter) to advance to a second elimination game Sunday night.
    UTSA has every reason to be confident it will join the 81 percent of regional champions who started 2-0 since the NCAA adopted the Super Regional format in 1999.
    "This isn't some jackleg team that's gotten hot," Schlossnagle said of the Roadrunners. "They're really good."
    Texas, on the other hand, knows extending the season to Monday is a tall order.
    "The goal moving forward is just to win one pitch at a time and not try to look ahead or think about winning two games or trying to win three games," said catcher Rylan Galvan, who did his part in the late innings, crushing his team-leading 15th home run of the season to left field in the bottom of the seventh. "Just win one pitch at a time. If we can do that, we'll put ourselves in the position."
    The Longhorns are facing an uphill battle, 27 outs away from the curtain coming down on Schlossnagle’s memorable debut.
    The only option Texas has is to start the climb. Whether it has enough gas in the tank to make it to the summit is another story.
    "We may have lost this battle, but we didn't lose the war yet," Galvan said. "There's still a lot of baseball to be played."
    Jeff Howe
    How Friday’s 7-1 win over Houston Christian in the opening game of the Austin Regional unfolded went a lot like the 2025 season has played out for Texas.
    The Longhorns didn’t win with style points en route to capturing the SEC regular-season championship and the No. 2 overall national seed in the NCAA Tournament. The way Texas (43-12) grounded out wins, surpassing the most optimistic expectations for Jim Schlossnagle’s first season on the Forty Acres, was how it advanced into the winner’s bracket for a Saturday tilt with either UTSA or Kansas State.
    Offensively, the Longhorns righted the ship with only four strikeouts after fanning 10 more times in seven of their last 10 games, a stretch in which the Texas bats racked up 128 strikeouts. At the same time, the lone extra-base the Longhorns recorded against the Southland Conference Tournament champion Huskies was Will Gasparino’s fifth-inning RBI double to left field, which capped a five-run, six-hit frame.
    Texas didn’t mash the ball all over UFCU Disch-Falk Field. Instead, it took advantage of three Houston Christian (32-24) errors and manufactured more than enough runs to put itself one step closer to the program hosting a Super Regional for the first time since 2021.
    "You've got to give Parker Edwards credit," Schlossnagle said of the Huskies' starting pitcher. Edwards did his job, holding the Longhorns to one hit before Texas finally created separation in the fifth.
    "Any time you look on the roster, and you see a guy is a No. 1 starter for a team that's in a regional, and he's a senior, that just tells you he's been around the block," Schlossnagle said. "He's not going to be spooked. He's running it up there 95 [mph]. He had a good cutter going today.
    "Sometimes," he added, "it's OK for the other team to be good."
    Gasparino drew a four-pitch walk to lead off the third inning, stole second base, advanced to third on an infield chopper freshman phenom Jonah Williams turned into a single and scored when Ethan Mendoza was retired on a 6-3 groundout. Second baseman Jeremy Rader, who left the game with an undisclosed upper body injury after a violent fifth-inning collision with Williams, couldn’t handle a ground ball off Max Belyeu’s bat, bringing Williams home and putting the Longhorns in front for good.
    "Somebody needed to come up with a big hit," said Kimble Schuessler, whose two-run single highlighted the productive Texas fifth. "We were able to get some guys on base, and then were able to come up with that big hit."
    Schuessler’s decisive blow brought Williams home and allowed Mendoza to score, even though a play at the plate had to be reviewed before the second run could be officially tallied. After a bullet from right fielder Tevis Payne nailed Mendoza at the plate in the first inning, a second issue sliding into home nearly brought another Texas inning to an abrupt end.
    Schlossnagle was visibly upset with Adrian Rodriguez, who contributed to the chaos as the lone man in a home uniform in Mendoza’s line of vision as he tried to cross the plate in both situations.
    "If the ball is coming from right field, you've got to tell him to not just slide, but to get to the back side of home plate," Schlossnagle said. "The same thing when the ball is coming from left field.
    "That was a pretty inexpensive experience," he added. "It can be expensive real quick this time of year, so we have to be better."
    Rodriguez made up for it, though, bringing Schuessler home from second with an RBI single up the middle. Jalin Flores and Casey Borba made it three consecutive Texas singles, the latter bringing Rodriguez home before Gasparino ended the scoring.
    Friday’s win felt like a typical midweek game. Thankfully, the Longhorns got a similar result to their 12-2 seven-inning run-rule win over Houston Christian on April 8 by playing an error-free game in the field behind three pitchers — lefty Ethan Walker, Grayson Saunier and hard-throwing righty Hudson Hamilton — who scattered eight hits over nine innings, struck out six and issued only two free passes (a hit batter charged to Saunier and a walk charged to Hamilton).
    As for the offense, an unspectacularly solid performance is one Schlossnagle wants the Longhorns to build on as they continue a road they hope takes them to Omaha for an NCAA-record 39th time.
    "We got on them pretty good the last five or six days," Schlossnagle said. "We challenged the offense. It wasn't meant to build pressure. It was meant to hold it to a little bit of a higher standard. If you're going to be gritty about anything, have it be the preparation. Then, when the game gets here, you need to do the opposite: you have fun. I think, early on, everybody feels it. You haven't played in a week, and you want to score nine runs, and your coaches have been onto you about being a better offensive team. We put together some good swings, and how we end up with a north wind and Austin, Texas, on May 30, I'll never know.
    "I think if we had those balls carry out of the ballpark or something like that, we maybe feel a little bit better," he added. "But, 7-1? We'll take it and keep moving on."
    Jeff Howe
    The next step for the historic group of Longhorns who accounted for a school-record 12 picks in the 2024 NFL Draft is coming to terms on their rookie contracts.
    Six of the 12 rookies were signed, sealed and delivered to their respective franchises as of Sunday. Gunnar Helm was the most recent Texas draftee to sign, agreeing to terms with the Tennessee Titans, although the terms of the fourth-round pick’s (No. 120 overall) deal have yet to be made public.
    With that said, the following are the reported terms for which the other five former Longhorns have signed.
    Kelvin Banks Jr., New Orleans Saints (Round 1, No. 9 overall pick): Banks, Jahdae Barron and Matthew Golden stand to make more money than the reported figures if their fifth-year options are picked up. Banks signed a four-year deal with a signing bonus of more than $6.93 million, but the total value of his contract ($27.7 million) is fully guaranteed.
    Barryn Sorrell, Green Bay Packers (Round 4, No. 124 overall pick): Sorrell’s four-year, $5.14 million deal includes a signing bonus of $941,852. The signing bonus is the only portion of Sorrell’s contract guaranteed to be paid out.
    Jaydon Blue, Dallas Cowboys (Round 5, No. 149 overall pick): Blue’s deal is for four years with a total value of $4.63 million. His signing bonus ($427,068) is the only guaranteed portion of the contract.
    Hayden Conner, Arizona Cardinals (Round 6, No. 211 overall pick): Conner’s signing bonus ($174,280) is the only guaranteed money headed his way on the four-year, $4.37 million deal he signed.
    Quinn Ewers, Miami Dolphins (Round 7, No. 231 overall pick): Ewers signed a four-year deal worth $4.33 million. The only guaranteed money Ewers has coming to him is his signing bonus ($131,576).
    The five Texas products have signed NFL rookie contracts worth $46,206,022. Of that money, $27,406,022 is fully guaranteed, with $8,607,588 in signing bonuses.
    The projected contract values based on the rookie wage scale, which changes every year based on the salary cap increasing or decreasing, aren’t far off from the money for which the remaining draftees will sign. The biggest issues preventing rookie contracts from getting done include language (some teams will look to put various classes in the contract that protect them from shelling out money they don’t believe they should be on the hook for) and when certain portions of the guaranteed money will be paid out.
    According to Spotrac, the following dollar figures are the total value of the contracts that the seven (including Helm) remaining Longhorns are projected to earn:
    Jahdae Barron, Denver Broncos (Round 1, No. 20 overall pick): $18,048,198
    Matthew Golden, Green Bay Packers (Round 1, No. 23 overall pick): $17,551,274
    Alfred Collins, San Francisco 49ers (Round 2, No. 43 overall pick): $10,296,326
    Andrew Mukuba Philadelphia Eagles (Round 2, No. 64 overall pick): $7,155,826
    Vernon Broughton, New Orleans Saints (Round 3, No. 71 overall pick): $6,634,052
    Gunnar Helm, Tennessee Titans (Round 4, No. 120 overall pick): $5,171,100
    Cameron Williams, Philadelphia Eagles (Round 6, No. 207 overall pick): $4,401,198
    When the remaining unsigned contracts are official, the Texas draft class will be worth an estimated $115,463,996.
    Jeff Howe
    Barryn Sorrell’s mind was grasping how close Texas had come to a berth in the College Football Playoff National Championship while simultaneously processing the end of his Longhorn career when he reflected on the four seasons he spent in burnt orange.
    Experiencing a whirlwind of emotions after the 2024 season ended with a heartbreaking 28-14 Cotton Bowl loss to Ohio State, Sorrell’s response to a loaded question — if coming to Texas was everything he thought it would be — was detailed and purposeful. It appropriately summed up the four-year odyssey of the Longhorns’ recruiting class from the 2021 cycle.
    “It's just been a journey,” Sorrell said from within the bowels of AT&T Stadium. "There's so many great memories that I'll always have and I'm thankful for it. I'm just so blessed and happy to realize that walking away from this, I'm leaving it better than I found it.”
    Along with helping Texas improve from a 5-7 record in Steve Sarkisian’s first season to a team that won at a championship-caliber clip, including a Big 12 title, a berth in the SEC Championship and consecutive trips to the CFP semifinals, Sorrell was one of seven draft picks to emerge from a transition class.
    Of the 22 signees in the cycle, 20 committed to former coach Tom Herman’s staff. Sorrell was among the 19 recruits who signed with Texas before Herman was fired and replaced by Sarkisian on Jan. 2, 2021.
    Unlike his predecessors, Sarkisian didn’t go scorched earth when assessing what he inherited from the previous regime. Sarkisian’s organization carefully examined the cupboard, eventually learning the Longhorns had a group of newcomers long on football character and strong developmental traits.
    Sorrell was among the young Texas players who bought into Sarkisian’s vision from the jump, which laid the foundation of the juggernaut the current regime has built.
    “We got along from Day 1,” Sorrell said of his relationship with Sarkisian. “He wanted to win. I'd seen that from the first meeting. Throughout the first year, hearing what he was saying and guys not really picking it up, I wanted to put those things in place. I feel like that’s what I’ve done and that’s what we’ve done and it’s why we are where we are.”
    One of the first declarations Sarkisian made in his introductory press conference was that he wanted to oversee a program capable of developing talent at an elite level. Xavier Worthy is the first recruit Sarkisian plucked from the high school ranks who went on to become an NFL draft pick.
    With that said, the Longhorns won 25 games over the last two seasons because the Sarkisian regime did a magnificent job developing the players they inherited.
    A fourth-round selection by the Green Bay Packers in last month’s draft, Sorrell’s recruiting class features two first-rounders (Worthy and Byron Murphy II), one second-round pick (Jonathon Brooks), three fourth-rounders (Sorrell, Ja’Tavion Sanders and Gunnar Helm) and one player drafted in the sixth round (Hayden Conner). While Worthy and Sanders were regarded as top-100 prospects by the recruiting industry, the same can’t be said for the rest of the class: Brooks and Murphy were unranked four-star prospects in the 247Sports Composite, and Conner snuck into the top 300 of the On3 Industry rankings, but 247Sports and On3 had Helm and Sorrell among the five lowest-rated non-specialists in the class.
    Along with the seven draft picks, two 2021 signees (Morice Blackwell Jr. and Juan Davis) completed their eligibility at Texas without entering the NCAA transfer portal. Charles Wright and Max Merril stayed in the program for multiple seasons and Casey Cain was a contributor on offense before transferring to UNLV.
    Sarkisian and company just assembled the No. 1 recruiting class in the country in the 2025 cycle, the most recent roster additions poised to help the Longhorns remain championship contenders for the foreseeable future. Texas will continue to recruit at an elite level and has a lot of unfinished business under Sarkisian, meaning the accomplishments of the 2021 class could eventually pale in comparison to future hauls.
    Nevertheless, there might not be a recruiting class more important to Sarkisian’s recent and future success than the group that’s been there every step of the way.
    “I came here and the culture was different,” said Sorrell, who added that there were “a lot of ups and downs” throughout his four seasons in the program. “I just focused on, 'How can I get better? How can I impact this team?' I feel like I've done that at a good level to get us to this point. Now, it's [time] for the guys behind me to take my lessons and things that I tried to teach the guys in my room and throughout this team, and, hopefully, they can exceed the standard that we set.”
    Jeff Howe
    Arch Manning wasn’t among the 13 quarterbacks selected in the 2025 NFL Draft. Nevertheless, the rising redshirt sophomore poised to lead a Texas team with national championship aspirations was mentioned as much as the baker’s dozen who were picked over the draft’s seven rounds, as the potential No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 draft.
    Monday’s Touchdown Club of Houston luncheon wasn’t the first time Steve Sarkisian has been asked about Manning’s future on the Forty Acres. Still, the question wasn’t about Manning handling being the Longhorns’ backup quarterback.
    Instead, Sarkisian was asked during a fan Q&A at the Bayou City Event Center if he had “a sense whether” Manning would be at Texas one year or two years, since he’s eligible to enter next year’s draft.
    “Here’s what I hope,” Sarkisian said as nervous laughter broke out throughout the room. “I hope he's got a really hard decision to make on — about Jan. 21. That means he played a long time, that means he probably had a really good season, and that means that he's trying to figure out, 'Do I want one more year in the burnt orange? Or is it time to go to the NFL?'
    “I hope it's a really, really hard decision,” he added. “I hope it's not a no-brainer to come back to school.”
    The discussion of Manning becoming the third No. 1 overall pick in his family (Peyton Manning in 1998 and Eli Manning in 2004) after one season as QB1 for the Longhorns is acceptable post-spring practice fodder. Any prolonged draft speculation falls somewhere on a relevance spectrum between writers, reporters, and publishers openly pining for Manning to be the quarterback of the future for the team they cover and content mills farming for clicks.
    The expectation has long been for Manning to spend at least two seasons at the wheel of Sarkisian’s offense. Regardless, it would be a surprise if Sarkisian isn’t asked about the length of Manning’s stay in Austin several times before Texas opens the 2025 season on the road in a Cotton Bowl rematch with reigning national champion Ohio State on Aug. 30.
    Longhorn fans are fortunate to follow a football program covered by media outlets (OTF among them) wise enough to avoid giving in to the temptation to drive pointless narratives involving the 6-foot-4-inch, 222-pound quarterback with the potential to help Texas secure the program’s first national title since 2005. The same goes for ESPN’s Matt Miller and NFL.com's Lance Zierlein, who did their respective parts to stamp out the idea that Manning is destined to headline the 2026 draft.
    “I won’t be doing any draft work on Arch for 2026,” Miller wrote. “He’s probably a 2027 player. He could be a 2028 player.”
    Zierlein pointed out two notable facts: Peyton and Eli Manning "both played four years of college ball,” he wrote, and Arch Manning has the earning potential through NIL deals to put off the NFL until he and his family decide it's time to go.
    “Why do people think Arch is going to be in the 2026 draft?” he wrote.
    The circus might slow down, but it won’t stop. For Texas fans already tired of opposing fans and the football media anxiously awaiting Manning’s departure, heeding Sarkisian’s advice should help maintain everyone’s sanity and enjoy what could be an unprecedented era of Longhorn football.
    “Let’s let this guy go play this year,” Sarkisian said. “Let's let him have fun, finally getting his opportunity to be the starting quarterback for the Texas Longhorns. It's been a lifelong dream for this guy to do this.
    “It's finally his time,” he added. “I hope he can just have an opportunity to enjoy it and enjoy it the right way because, like a lot of guys from our team, he's been dreaming about this his whole life, and now he gets an opportunity to go do it.
    “I just want to make sure that we all support him in this journey.”
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