Longhorns punch Cotton Bowl ticket in 2OT thriller

ATLANTA — No. 5 Texas pulled pulled away with a 39-31 double overtime win vs. No. 4 Arizona State in the College Football Playoff quarterfinals in the Peach Bowl at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Wednesday.

Texas hopes to return to Atlanta for Jan. 20′s national championship game also at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. First, it’s got to return home.

The Longhorns (13-2) will play the winner of No. 1 Oregon and No. 6 Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl on Jan. 10 at Arlington’s AT&T Stadium. The winner of that bowl game — which serves as a CFP semifinal game — will advance to the title game.

The Longhorns are the sixth team to reach the CFP semifinals in back-to-back seasons since the playoff’s introduction in 2014, joining Alabama, Clemson, Oklahoma, Ohio State and Georgia. Texas lost to Washington in last year’s semifinal.

Here are five thoughts from the Longhorns’ win.

How Texas pulled it off in overtime

The game was forced into overtime after Texas kicker Bert Auburn missed a would-be game-winning 38-yard field goal attempt wide right at the end of regulation. Arizona State scored first in overtime on a 3-yard Cam Skattebo touchdown run to take a 31-24 lead before Texas tied the game on a 28-yard touchdown pass from Quinn Ewers to Matthew Golden on 4th and 13.

Texas got the ball first in the second overtime period and wasted no time. Ewers (322 passing yards, 3 touchdowns, 1 interception) found tight end Gunnar Helm for a 25-yard touchdown on the period’s first play and hit Golden for a 2-point conversion in the right corner of the end zone to give the Longhorns a 39-31 lead. Texas defensive back Andrew Mukuba intercepted Sun Devils quarterback Sam Leavitt on a third down attempt on Arizona State’s ensuing possession to end the game.

How Arizona State, Skattebo orchestrated a comeback

The Sun Devils trailed 17-3 at halftime despite having outpaced Texas in total yards (178 to 133), plays (47 to 21) and time of possession (20:11 to 9:49) through two quarters. That might’ve been indicative of how they’d dominate the second half.

Arizona State out-scored Texas 21-10 over the course of the second half’s first eight possessions and tied the game at 24-24 on a 2-yard Skattebo touchdown run (and ensuing 2-point conversion, also from Skattebo) with five minutes left in the fourth quarter.

Skattebo — a senior running back who placed fifth in the Heisman Trophy voting this season — finished with 215 all-purpose yards in regulation and made an impact in the rushing, receiving and passing game. He rushed for 132 yards, a touchdown and a 2-point conversion, caught 6 passes for 83 yards (including a 62-yarder from quarterback Sam Leavitt that set up his game-tying run) and threw a 42-yard touchdown pass on a trick play to pull the Sun Devils within 24-16 of the Longhorns with 6:40 left in the game.

The Sun Devils’ defense held Texas to one touchdown (a five-yard Quinn Ewers run in the third quarter that gave the Longhorns a 24-8 lead) and two missed field goals from Auburn. Arizona State, meanwhile, scored on a safety (to make it 17-5 in the third), a Carston Kieffer field goal (to make it 17-8 in the third) and the two touchdowns which Skattebo was involved in.

Skattebo scored Arizona State’s lone overtime touchdown, too, to give the Sun Devils a 31-24 lead in the first extra time period.

If you blinked, you might’ve missed it

It took Texas all of, oh, 45 seconds to build a two-score lead in the first quarter. The Longhorns only had to touch the ball three times, too. After Arizona State kicked a 39-yard field goal on its opening drive, Texas responded with a two-play, 77-yard drive that ended with the game’s first touchdown. Ewers and receiver Golden connected for a 54-yard gain on Texas’ first play from scrimmage, then Ewers hit DeAndre Moore Jr. for a 23-yard touchdown to take a 7-3 lead with 8:19 left in the first.

The Sun Devils went three-and-out on their next drive and punted from their own 27-yard line. Texas receiver Silas Bolden caught the ball at the Longhorns’ 25-yard line and made two would-be tacklers miss on his way to a 75-yard return for a touchdown with 7:74 left in the first.

Bolden’s return was just the third time in the first quarter that a Texas skill position player touched the football and it gave the Longhorns a 14-3 lead. It also marked the last time that Texas scored a touchdown in the first half; the Longhorns totaled just 56 yards and 3 points (via a second-quarter Bert Auburn field goal) in the 19 first-half plays that they ran after Moore’s touchdown grab and totaled just 8 yards in the entire third quarter.

A special teams roller coaster

Auburn’s two missed field goals loomed large. So, too, did Bolden’s punt return. They were just the tips of a special teams iceberg in Wednesday’s game.

— Arizona State’s first three points were gifted by a lack of Texas discipline. The Sun Devils punted after a three-and-out on their opening drive, but Longhorns special teamer Morice Blackwell Jr. ran into kicker Kanyon Floyd and gave Arizona State a new set of downs. The Sun Devils kicked their first field goal of the game eight plays later.

— Sun Devils head coach Kenny Dillingham and company were aggressive in the first half. The issue: it didn’t exactly work. Arizona State was 0-for-3 on fourth down midway through the second quarter until the Sun Devils dialed up a successful fake punt. Floyd, on 4th and 9 from Arizona State’s own 21-yard line, completed a 32-yard pass to a wide-open Blazen Lono-Wong down the sideline for a first down to set up a field goal attempt right plays later.

— About that field goal attempt: The Sun Devils, still down two touchdowns in the waning moments of the first half, attempted a 36-yard kick with 11 seconds left in the second quarter. Texas defensive lineman Ethan Burke (a 6-foot-6 junior) skied high to block Carston Kieffer’s kick and forced it to fall short of the goal posts.

Did Texas leave its run game in 2024?

OK, so, maybe it’s just the stadium? The Longhorns rushed for just 53 yards on 29 carries for an average of 1.8 yards per attempt in regulation. It was a stark difference from the season-high 292 rushing yards and four touchdowns they totaled vs. Clemson in the first round, and a tad more reminiscent of their clunker against Georgia in the SEC championship game in Atlanta in early December.

Texas rushed for just 31 yards in that loss to the Bulldogs and coach Steve Sarkisian described the Longhorns’ run game performance in that game as an “anomaly” on Tuesday. Texas totaled 200-plus yards on the ground in its final two regular season games against Texas A&M and Kentucky before the conference title game and first-round playoff game.

Anomalies, it turns out, can strike twice.