Texas After Week 3 in 2013

As I mentioned yesterday, since there is some interest in the University of Texas, I have decided to take a more in depth look at the Longhorns for the last two weeks using the Complex Invasion College Football Production Model.  (There is not enough variation in the data for the model to be very reliable for the first week.  I could run it and it would come out OK, but not good enough for such a small sample of games).

FYI:  2013 NCAA FBS Top 25 for Week 3 (link at bottom of blog for week two)

This past weekend the Texas Longhorns lost to Mississippi (aka Ole Miss) and the week before lost to BYU.  As I have written about earlier, Texas has not really been an elite team since 2009 with final season rankings of #70 in 2010, #46 in 2011 and #53 in 2012.  The last two seasons Texas has been above average in terms of on-field production, but the Longhorns are no where near competing at a national championship level.

At the end of the second week of the regular season, the Longhorns lost (21-40) to BYU and fired their defensive coach as a result.  At the end of that week, Texas was the #72 most productive team in the NCAA FBS (which is below average).  On the bright side they had the #18 most productive offense, but the #117 most productive defense.  In other words, their were only eight other teams in the NCAA FBS that had a defense with lower productivity.  In terms of strength of schedule, Texas had an 82.5 versus an 82.94 for the "league" as a whole, meaning that Texas was playing an average strength of schedule.

This past weekend also saw the Longhorns losing to #64 ranked Mississippi going into the game.  Mississippi ended up as the #41 ranked team at the end of last week.  Looking at the Longhorns, even though they lost the game they improved their overall ranking to #64 (slightly below average).  On the offensive side their rank slipped to #22 and their defensive rank improved to #98.  Like the previous week, their strength of schedule was 79 as compared to a 78.98 for the "league" as a whole, meaning that they have played a schedule that is average to the league.

It looks like it might be a long season for Longhorn fans, given that they are rather average and their future schedule (other than Iowa State) is against teams currently ranked better than Texas.