How Texas, Georgia evolved since 2019 Sugar Bowl: The makings of an all-time SEC duel

With a black, oversized “2019 Allstate Sugar Bowl Champions” Nike T-shirt draped over his pads and a ball cap to match, Sam Ehlinger stood on stage at the 20-yard line of the Superdome with a declaration.

After Ehlinger and the Longhorns defeated then-No. 5 Georgia at the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 1, 2019, it seemed as if Texas was on the rise. Ehlinger, when asked by ESPN reporter Holly Rowe what the win would do to spring the 10-4 Longhorns into the next season, leaned into the moment.

“Longhorn Nation,” he said. “We’re baaaaaaaaack!”

With burnt-orange-and-white ticker tape littering the turf, it felt like the start of the Longhorns’ climb back to college football’s elite. Instead, it was the peak of the Tom Herman era, and the program failed to capitalize on that momentum in its final two years, leading to his ouster. Texas bottomed out in 2021, Steve Sarkisian’s first year, before making a three-year climb that now has the Longhorns at No. 1.

For Georgia, that forgettable night in New Orleans came amid a time of transition. It played for a national title the year before, but had not yet developed into the juggernaut it would eventually be under Kirby Smart. The loss to Texas was a dose of humility, on the way to changes Smart would make to propel the program to back-to-back national titles.

The Longhorns’ and Bulldogs’ paths cross for the first time since that Sugar Bowl when No. 1 Texas hosts No. 5 Georgia on Saturday in a game with SEC title and College Football Playoff implications. Both are legitimate national title contenders today, but their journeys to this point have been quite different.

Texas then: Failing to capitalize

Texas’ second season under Herman in 2018 began the same way his first one did: with the Longhorns faceplanting against Maryland.

Despite the ominous start, Texas rebounded admirably, reeling off six straight wins, including three over ranked USC, TCU and rival Oklahoma. Despite a pair of midseason setbacks to Oklahoma State and West Virginia, the Longhorns worked their way into the Big 12 Championship Game but fell to the Kyler Murray-led Sooners, resulting in Texas’ Sugar Bowl berth.

In New Orleans, Texas took it to Georgia. The Longhorns played fast and were physical, building a quick 17-0 lead. Ehlinger dazzled with his dual-threat ability and, across the board, the Horns just looked better in their 28-21 win over the Dawgs, who just missed the Playoff. The win seemed to validate the program’s trajectory under Herman.

“You’re thinking ‘All right, we’re moving in the right direction,’” Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte said this week.

The immediate aftermath was positive. The Longhorns finished ninth in 2018’s final AP poll, their first top-10 finish since 2009 when they were national runners-up. They cemented a recruiting class that ranked third in the country, their second consecutive top-three haul. With Ehlinger returning, Texas entered 2019 as a top-10 preseason team.

But the Longhorns fell short of expectations. Texas lost a 45-38 thriller to eventual national champion LSU in September, then later dropped games to Oklahoma, TCU, Iowa State and Baylor. The Longhorns also needed a last-second field goal to survive a scare from Kansas and finished 8-5.

The pandemic-shortened 2020 season had a rough start. Texas needed a 15-point fourth-quarter comeback to beat Texas Tech, then lost to TCU and Oklahoma in a four-overtime marathon in consecutive weeks. Sitting at 2-2 four games into Year 4 of the Herman era, with a 1-4 record against the rival Sooners, fans’ patience began to wane.

Texas took subsequent hits in recruiting. Quinn Ewers, a five-star quarterback who initially committed to Texas, backed off his pledge two weeks after the OU loss and later committed to Ohio State. He was the latest in a trend of elite Lone Star State prospects who Texas failed to land.

“Before Sark got there, we had a little bit of a tough time getting some of the best talent in the state of Texas,” Temple coach Stan Drayton, Texas’ running backs coach under Herman and in 2021 under Sarkisian, said in December. “If you’re struggling to do that, you’re always going to have a tough time at Texas.”

When Texas, still in Big 12 title game contention, blew a double-digit lead at home in a November loss to Iowa State, it felt like a fatal blow. Despite the Longhorns’ talent and resource advantage, it was their second straight loss to the Cyclones. Running back Breece Hall poured salt in the wound by lauding Iowa State’s “five-star culture” afterward.

5 Star Culture…

— Breece Hall (@BreeceH) November 27, 2020

Fans began to pine for Urban Meyer. Del Conte released a statement after the regular season saying “Tom Herman is our coach.” A debate over the school song, “The Eyes of Texas,” raged in the midst of it all, engulfing the football program in the process.

Meanwhile, in the background, Texas leadership quietly mulled a conference change, something that wouldn’t come to light until the following summer. Texas president Jay Hartzell and Oklahoma president Joe Harroz had discussed leaving the Big 12.

Herman finished out the season and Texas went 7-3, but days after an Alamo Bowl win over Colorado, Herman was out and Sarkisian was in.

With a conference change potentially on the horizon, “it was clear we needed a whole new culture and a whole new direction for the program,” Texas Board of Regents chair Kevin Eltife said this week.

Georgia then: A brewing, not yet focused, juggernaut

Georgia came to New Orleans in a weird spot mentally. The Bulldogs were coming off the previous year’s unexpected run to the national championship game, and then a heartbreaking loss to Alabama — again — in the 2018 SEC championship. So it was going to be hard for the Bulldogs to get up for a non-Playoff game. And then there were the distractions.

Justin Fields, the highly touted freshman quarterback, entered the transfer portal during bowl practice, but Smart allowed him to make the trip to New Orleans and practice with the team. Ditto for cornerback Deandre Baker and Luke Ford, who were respectively turning pro and transferring but still hanging around.

The experience made Smart change his mind. A year later, when Georgia played Baylor in the Sugar Bowl, Smart told opting-out players to stay home. Georgia won that game.

“We learned from the Texas game, with guys that may not have been all-in,” Smart said this week. “It was a weird season because I think that was one where you’re all the way in it (Playoff contention) until the end, and then you’re not. One of our first games that you weren’t playing to be in the Playoff.”

But lest he leave the impression he was blaming that for losing the game, Smart added: “I remember they had a really good team. They were really talented. And so were we.”

Smart was also dealing with transition on the coaching staff. Mel Tucker had taken the Colorado job after three seasons as Georgia’s defensive coordinator. Smart had not named a replacement, only that it was clear he would promote from within, setting up some fun drama a few days before the game when Georgia’s defensive coordinator was supposed to speak. A few minutes before, a Sugar Bowl official put Dan Lanning’s name on the table, the unofficial indication it would be him, but it wasn’t official for a while later.

Offensive coordinator Jim Chaney was also, it turned out, calling his last game at Georgia. He would leave for Tennessee a few weeks after, with Smart promoting receivers coach James Coley.

All week leading up to the game, Smart and his players said the right things about being focused. But the biggest indication they weren’t was two days beforehand, when Notre Dame, which got the third seed in the CFP, was shellacked by Alabama in the semifinals. Multiple Georgia players posted emojis and other thoughts on social media, making clear they thought they should be there.

When Georgia itself was routed in its game, those tweets were resurrected.

“We got outplayed,” junior receiver Riley Ridley said. “From here we can just move on and just focus on us, as Georgia.”

Ridley turned pro a few days later, along with Mecole Hardman and Isaac Nauta.

Roster churn, of course, is part of the game, and a few weeks prior Smart signed many of the players who would help lead the team to the national championship: Nolan Smith, Nakobe Dean, Travon Walker, Lewis Cine and a late addition to take Fields’ spot as the backup: Stetson Bennett.

Texas now: Ready to join the club of elites

Sarkisian arrived at Texas fresh off a national championship run as Alabama’s offensive coordinator. Texas, still eight months away from the SEC move becoming official, wanted someone with experience in that league.

“He did not know that we were going to go to the Southeastern Conference, but we had an inclination,” Del Conte said. “We wanted someone that understood how to build a roster that was ready for that conference.”

In his interview, Sarkisian laid out his plan to build the roster “inside-out” as Del Conte describes it, focusing on the trenches first. A rough 5-7 debut season, which included a six-game losing streak and a stunning loss to Kansas, cast a shadow over the start of the Sarkisian era. But those struggles — influenced partly by those 2018 and 2019 recruiting classes that included major attrition and missed evaluations — didn’t shake him. “He never wavered,” Del Conte said.

Eltife preached patience as Sarkisian established his culture and constructed the roster.

“People were immediately complaining that we weren’t winning,” Eltife said. “We were like ‘Slow down guys, give it some time. We’ve got to build it.’ … I took a lot of calls those first two years.”

Sarkisian got Ewers — who spent four months at Ohio State — back in Texas via the transfer portal, and in 2022 the Longhorns took a step forward. They went toe-to-toe with Alabama but lost that game and four others by single digits. Recruiting took off, as Texas stacked its top-five 2022 class with offensive and defensive linemen. Gradually, things began to look up.

“You go through some of those the tough roads of Year 1 and some of the ups and downs in Year 2 and you’re thinking, ‘Man, we’re so close,’” Sarkisian said last week.

The Longhorns signed the No. 3 class in 2023, headlined by No. 1 quarterback recruit Arch Manning. Then came the on-field breakthrough: Texas beat Alabama in Tuscaloosa to announce itself as a College Football Playoff contender.

A midseason blip, via a loss to Oklahoma, didn’t derail the Longhorns. They won seven straight to clinch the Big 12 championship, made the Playoff and finished 12-2 after a 37-31 loss to Washington in the Sugar Bowl. Eleven Longhorns were chosen in the NFL Draft and for the first time since 2009, Texas had real momentum.

“To be conference champs and to be a play away from competing for a national championship, that felt right to me,” Sarkisian said. “That felt like ‘This is where we’re supposed to be.’ And now we’ve got to try to take the necessary steps to try and go finish it.”

This year, despite losing all that talent, the Longhorns haven’t missed a beat. Ewers was playing at a Heisman Trophy level before a strained oblique interrupted his season on Sept. 14. He returned last week to lead the Longhorns to a win over the Sooners. And the roster is stacked across the board.

Texas has a veteran offensive line that is big and physical. It has a defensive front seven that is equal parts size and athleticism and an improved secondary. There’s speed across the skill positions. When Sarkisian arrived, Texas was nowhere near SEC-ready. Now, the Longhorns look and feel like the Alabamas and Georgias of the world.

“It’s pretty amazing how quickly Sarkisian has gotten us to this point,” Eltife said. “And it’s very gratifying.”

Georgia now: A consistent behemoth

When Georgia last played Texas, it was still new among the elite, arguably not quite there yet, trying to stay at that level. Bowl games are of arguable importance in the Playoff era, even in days of the four-team format, but the thumping in New Orleans certainly wasn’t a big help.

It would be a great story to say it was the kick in the butt that propelled Georgia to greatness — but accuracy commands pointing out there were a few more bumps. The Bulldogs made it to their third straight SEC championship in 2019 but this time ran into the Joe Burrow-LSU offensive buzzsaw. A year later, Georgia slipped further, losing two regular season games for only the second time in Smart’s tenure. (It hasn’t happened since, though Georgia comes into this game with one loss.)

Entering the 2021 season, Smart and the program faced questions about whether they would ever get over the hump. By this time, however, Smart had modernized his offense by hiring Todd Monken as coordinator, finally beat Alabama and won the national title behind the improbable Bennett, who would lead the team to another title a year later.

Through it all, Smart remained consistent. He tweaked some of his philosophy to fit the modern game, especially on offense, and adapted his roster-building to the era of the portal and NIL. But the core beliefs remained: building along the lines of scrimmage, hard and physical practices, and emphasizing recruiting in, well, everything.

But while the coach and the core philosophies didn’t change over the five years following that Sugar Bowl, the circumstances did. Getting the first national title was a monumental relief and proof of concept. Winning another one the next year, in even more dominant fashion, placed the program atop the college football world, and Nick Saban’s retirement left Smart as the most accomplished head coach in the sport.

He got there by sticking to what got him to that same point the last time he played Texas.

“If you ask me, nothing’s changed,” said nose tackle Nazir Stackhouse, who joined the program before the 2020 season. “Just a lot of new faces. The same goal. To go and win every game that we play, any person or program that we play, we always have the same goal. I don’t think anything has changed in our program. Everyone’s working hard, and developing the older guys and the younger guys, buying into the same standard that we all have to uphold.”

It all leads to Saturday …

The sport has changed drastically since that Sugar Bowl. The transfer portal wasn’t even three months old then. NIL and the one-time transfer rule had yet to be formally introduced. The Longhorns and Bulldogs weren’t yet in the same conference.

But Sarkisian and Smart have seamlessly adapted to the new landscape and it’s a big reason their programs are here now. It’s not a coincidence that both are disciples of Saban, whose flexibility helped him become a seven-time national champion.

This is not the endpoint for Texas, though.

“We’re just getting started,” Del Conte said. “There’s a lot of football left to play. But what I’m really happy about is how Steve’s gone about building this program in its entirety.”

Greatness can be fleeting, of course, as Smart is aware. If his team loses on Saturday, it will find itself with two losses, in danger of missing the College Football Playoff, which would lead to hot takes about Texas being back — at the expense of Georgia.

But Smart isn’t looking at this game in the context of the Playoff or any be-all, end-all.

“You’re playing the long game,” Smart said. “The long game is who can be the best teams at the end of the year. And you’re trying to be one of the best 12 teams. And how that aligns with this game, it’s not relevant. We’ve got to worry about how we play in this game, we’ve got to worry about what we’ve got to do to play well in this game. Not any narrative that’s out there or what people say about the playoffs, because that’s a ways down the road. We’ve got to get better.”

Georgia walk-on running back Cash Jones is one of the few Texas natives on the team. He didn’t grow up a Longhorns fan, didn’t watch the 2019 Sugar Bowl and professed no special meaning in the matchup. But Jones did bite when asked if he knew how to make the Horns down sign.

“Mmm-hmm,” Jones said, holding the two outstretched fingers down and thumb out.

Reporters laughed, and one asked him to do it again. Jones did, smiling.

“Don’t do it again,” a Georgia communications staffer said from the side, smiling, but firm.

Jones turned back to the main subject.

“It’s gonna be a great game. It’s cool to play against a top-tier team. They’re No. 1 in the nation,” he said. “It’s gonna be a heck of a ballgame.”

(Top photo from 2019 Sugar Bowl: Ken Murray / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)